Secret of the Stars (9 page)
Read Secret of the Stars Online
Authors: Andre Norton
The eyes, deep-set in that stained fur, blinked. Joktar pressed against his tree, feeling that trunk had suddenly become transparent.
Again that creak of snow. The head pushed forward, bringing into visibility thickly maned shoulders, forefeet with sharply split hooves as dreadfully bedabbled as the horns. Slowly, with caution but no fear, the lamby bull came out into the open path, head up, nostril flaps open to the full.
Those first few steps brought the beast almost level with Joktar. The Terran expected every second to see that head swing in his direction. And for the first time in his life, he knew a wave of the kind of fear which saps wits, weakens muscle, makes a man wait supinely for death. He fought against that as the lamby minced almost delicately past his tree. And he could not at first believe the creature was not hunting him.
There came a rush, but not in his direction. The beast leaped along the trail, making an impetuous dive, carrying on into a brush wall between two trees. Crack of blaster bolt. A thin, high wail which could come from an animal or a man. Another crack of blaster, then an inhuman scream of agony.
The stench of burned flesh and hair hung foul on a rising wind. Joktar pulled away from the tree, stumbled into a run which took him along the lamby’s route. Why he was impelled to trace that charge he could not have said. But he knew he would find death before him.
He ploughed through the break in the underbrush to a scene of butchery. The lamby, most of its head charred away, lay on the human body it had been trampling. And working to free the latter were Roose and Hogan. A moment later Rysdyke crashed into the small clearing from the other side.
“Tolkus?”
Hogan caught a fragment of torn hood, tugged at it until the head it had once protected rolled limply to display the features of the dead. To Joktar the man was a stranger.
“Who?” Rysdyke’s question was half-protest. Roose’s breath puffed out in a thin white cloud through his mask.
“Never saw this one before, chief.” He shoved at the carcass of the lamby, forcing it off the body. The rent and bloodied fur of the stranger’s coat bore no company badge.
“Now I wonder,” Hogan considered the corpse impersonally. “Could he have been an envoy from Samms or Ebers? Or is someone in our mob ambitious enough to set up a swap.”
“That just isn’t so!” Roose spun around in the stained snow to stare indignantly up at his leader. “You know that none of the boys’d stand for a swap on you, chief. Never!”
“So I had thought,” Hogan commented lazily. “But there can always be sudden changes in the wind of policy. We, or I, was set up for this one. Whether the lamby was part of the original scheme, an extemporaneous last-minute double-check which failed, or just a coincidence which worked to save the skins of the righteous, we’ll never know. In the meantime, I propose we push the pace a little. It would never do for us to be late to the meeting now.”
“No,” Rysdyke was breathing a little hard. “I want to see who looks surprised when we do arrive.”
“Yes, that point has also occurred to me. Joktar, suppose you carry this.” Hogan picked up the blaster which had been the property of the dead sniper and tossed it over.
The rock island Hogan had designated for the meeting proved to be another of the remains left by the forgotten earlier inhabitants of Fenris. Once there had been an island in the middle of a now ice-bound river . . . or perhaps there had only been the projection of a reef. But based on that limited foundation was a circular wall of blocks, fitted together with fine skill, supporting now, well above water level, a hollow cone. Smoke ascended from the broken top of the cone, to be tattered by the wind.
“Somebody’s there,” Rysdyke observed.
But Roose was more intent upon the mountains beyond and Joktar, ignorant as he was of the Fenrian weather signs, could note those banks of gathering clouds in a thick roll to the northeast.
“Weather’s not holding,” the trapper pointed to the sky. “There’s a blanket building.”
“Right,” Hogan’s voice was clipped, urgent. “Tolkus,” he ordered the man who had joined them just as they left the forest clearing, “you circle and warn all our boys. Tell them to hunt shelter—quick!”
“But—” Rysdyke began to protest.
“We’re not the only ones to see those clouds,” Hogan replied. “No one is going to start trouble with a blanket coming. If we do have to face a show down, the action will come after the storm clouds. And the sooner we all get to cover the better!”
The ice covering the river was patterned with the tracks of men and sleds. The sleds themselves were staked out at a break in the cone wall. Hogan made a sharp turn to the left at the point and Joktar, copying him, found a narrow flight of stairs set in the wall itself, the tread stones projecting only inches. The passage was a funnel and the Terran’s imagination provided him with a picture of what would happen should a rock be hurled down that grade to meet upward bound traffic.
“Hulllloo!” Hogan’s call, echoing eerily up that stair, announced them and they were met by a dozen or so men. In the cone top there were traces of partitions, remains of small cells about the walls, floored with frozen earth. And in the center space a fire blazed while piles of wood filled several of the wall cells.
Even in the short time it had taken them to cross the river and climb the inner stair, the clouds had blotted out most of the daylight, stretching in oily black tongues from the peaks.
“Coming up a regular bury-in,” commented one of those awaiting Hogan. His speech was underlined by a blast of wind screaming across the broken top of the cone.
And with the wind came a whirling wall of snow. The men were fast at work. Smaller fires were kindled closer to the overhang of the outer walls. And with such fires before them and the solid blocks of the ancient stone at their backs, they prepared as best they could to wait out the fury of the blanket.
In the open, such a storm could bury the unfortunate. But here the ruins afforded almost as much protection as a company dome. The fire in the center hissed out under a dump of snow. Only the constant roaring of the wind was a growing torment to the ears, making it impossible for a man to hear the voice of even the neighbors he crowded against.
8
Joktar leaned his forehead against his knees. Under and around him he could feel the shudder of the cone. There came a crash to be heard even above the boom of the wind. A portion of the ancient stonework gave, was swept inward. Joktar felt the man beside him stir, hitch away. Under the shrilling of the storm, there sounded a thin screaming. He began to crawl after his neighbor.
The moment they ventured away from the wall, wind and snow lashed. They clawed over one of the small cell partitions, came to the mass of rubble which half-buried a man. Together they pulled apart the debris, blinded by snow, deafened by the wind, blundering awkwardly because their sense of touch was numbed. Finally they drew the man free, as he screamed again and went limp.
Somehow they got him back to the wall, to the warmth of their own share of fire. Joktar, his shoulder aching cruelly, half-collapsed against that stone support while his companion tried to aid the injured. Until the storm passed there was little they could do for him.
Time moved by no normal measure. Hours . . . half a day . . . Joktar became aware that there were longer and longer pauses in the blasts overhead, that the snow was allowing a window on the open sky once again. As the storm died, men shook free of small drifts, looked about dazedly, not quite sure they had once more beaten Fenris.
“So Gagly got it.” One of the white-powdered figures hunched forward to peer into the face of the man they had dragged from the cave-in.
“Gagly?” Hogan stripped off his mitten to push questing fingers into the throat opening of the other’s furs. “Yes, he’s gone. You’re going to miss Gagly, Samms . . . a pilot . . .”
“So, we’ll miss him.” Wide shoulders moved under the furs of one of the others in a shrug which was close to perfunctory. Above the scarf mask, Samms’ eyes were pale and shallow like mirrors to reflect an outside world, rather than reveal the emotions of the man who wore them in his skull.
He turned away from his dead follower to call: “Ebers, over here!”
One of the men brushing snow from his furs, stamping numb feet, raised his head, but made no move to obey that brusque summons.
“Ride out, Samms.” His voice was a slow drawl, carrying a measure of authority. “We’ll chew out your proposition when we’re ready.”
Above the face mask those pale gray eyes did not change, but Samms’ hand twitched, and was quickly checked. That twitch had been toward his blaster; Joktar had not been alone in noting that. Rysdyke, standing to one side, slid his feet a little apart as if bracing his body before calling for a blast out.
Some time passed before the center fire was rebuilt and they gathered around it to share provisions from their trailbags. They were still eating when the leader of the Kortoski mob arose, strode back and forth in the firelight as if his impatience goaded him into at least that counterfeit of action.
“They’ve leveled a new landing field in the Harband company,” he announced. “Plan to deliver supplies there straight without setting down at Siwaki. Just another move towards closing the regular port entirely. When all the fields are located in company areas, we can never hope to bring free traders in here again.”
“And what countermeasures do you propose?” That was Hogan sounding disinterested, almost languid. Samms came around quickly as if he had been challenged.
“Not to sit on our tails and wait!”
Joktar, watching narrowly, noting the unchanging shallowness of those gray eyes, revised his first judgment of Samms. On the surface, judged by his speech, his attitude, the outlaw was a hot-tempered brawler, ready to use weapon or fist to bull his way to what he wanted. A type readily understood by the trappers he sought to rule.
Only those eyes belied such a first reading. And Joktar chose to believe the eyes. Samms had the subtle signs of a gambler who had long ago graduated from a star-and-comet table to games played without the aid of kas-cards or counters. The Terran longed to know what series of events had brought Samms to Fenris as an emigrant. And he marked the other down as dangerous.
“So you don’t believe in waiting,” Hogan continued calmly. “May we ask what sort of action you are urging on us?”
“They are going to bring in a private ship on the Harband field. Two company vips, six in the crew. What if they found a reception committee ready to scoop the lot. We could dicker with Harband if we had their vips parked up here.”
“How did you comb out this information, Samms?” Ebers’ drawl came from the other side of the fire.
“Oh, Samms has his lines of information. Pretty effective they are too, it would seem. Perks is
really delivering,” Hogan returned.
“Perks was planted,” the other agreed readily. “When the time comes, he’ll give us more help than just information!”
“And just how did Perks make himself so solid with the companies that he can give us all this help? Wasn’t he the only survivor of a squad who got theirs on the Lizard Back?”
Hogan answered for Samms. “He was. Too bad, Samms, these awkward questions are bound to be asked. They’re doubly awkward for you because that squad were mostly loyal to Raymark, weren’t they? How
did
Perks make such a fine impression on his new employers? Use a judicious sellout as an introduction?”
A low mutter ran around the circle, growing to a growl. But Samms showed no signs of discomfiture.
“Perks was jumped. Then he was bright enough to take his chances with a good story when they pulled him in. He had one ready.”
“Always be prepared for capture as well as other eventualities,” remarked Hogan.
“Now,” Ebers struck in again, “we are being offered some tempting bait and invited to come close and take a sniff. Three mobs able to take this new field! Expect us to swallow that!”
“I would say that the taking of the field would only be a temporary move,” Hogan spoke directly to Ebers. “Samms has suggested kidnapping. We scoop up the vips, keep them while we dicker with the company until Harband and the rest promise us the wherewithal to make life merrier here in the wilderness. That it, Samms?”
“Sure, sure,” Ebers snarled his interruption. “We button up these vips, Harband yells and the patrol comes running. Those lads could cut us off in the breaks and starve us out. And where could we park the vips to have them ready and yet able to breathe and walk?”
“Yes, another small problem. To establish any kind of a semi-permanent base is to invite immediate investigation from the patrol. Move around and we expose our prisoners to the elements and lose them before we can prove their value.”
“Not if we take them off-planet!”
That one sentence from Samms might have been the opening blast of a second blanket the way it silenced his listeners. Joktar caught the new note in the other’s voice. Samms was getting close to his serious play now.
Hogan plucked at his mask. “Well, well. Do I detect some thoughts of Councilor Cullan and his visit to Loki?”
Again that tiny movement toward the blaster. All of Samms’ impatience could not be an act. And Hogan was deliberately applying pressure.
“What’s this Cullan got to do with it? He one of the vips?” Ebers wanted to know.
“At present he’s a member of the Supreme Council, and he’s anti-company, doesn’t believe in the monopolies on frontier planets. He’s argued the subject for years, now he’s beginning to get backing, big backing. And the vips are worrying. Three years ago there was a serious shake-up in the Colonization Section. A man named Kronfeld
got in as one of the project directors. He’s no political hack, but came up through the technical side. He’s talked Alvarn Thomlistos into supporting some of his ideas. And the Great Thorn has established a new foundation, backed by the net profits from the Alban Freight,
the Orsfo-Kol Mining Corporation and a few other such organizations.”
Joktar was startled. The net profits of the companies Hogan listed were enough to make a man slightly breathless when he tried to reckon the amounts of credits involved.
“I don’t think I need point out that the Great Thorn has friends on a great many different government levels. So Cullan sat down with Kronfeld and listened,
really
listened, to some truths. With Thom backing the spread of these ideas there’s going to be a lot of activity around the galaxy. About two months from now Cullan will be on Loki, gathering material for an assault on the company set-up as it is at present. Suppose a shipload of Harband vips, together with some spokesmen from our own select group, were to land there about the same time. Our arrival couldn’t be hushed up so that Cullan wouldn’t hear of it, and the subject matter could be just his meat. That is what you have in mind, isn’t it, Samms?”
If he were aware Hogan had taken over, Samms made no sign of either recognizing that or admitting defeat now.
“You are correct and amazingly well-informed.”
“And with Gagly dead, you’ll need the services of a pilot. Rysdyke now has the distinction of being the only free one on Fenris. Perhaps you had him in mind all along; Gagly had been out of space for five years. Now . . . when do you suggest we make this try to take over the Harband Field?”
“You mean you’re willing to go along with this crazy scheme, Hogan?” Ebers sounded incredulous.
“I think it has a number of possibilities.”
“Enough to get us all killed!” Ebers shot back. It was Samms who answered that.
“Would you rather rot out here? We have to make some definite move against the companies soon and I don’t mean just knocking off a hole in the mountains! We really have to cut into their cruising orbits or we’re outclassed and through. The free men on Fenris either climb to the top now or they cease to be free!”
“He’s right, you know, Ebers. We’ve dragged on here for two years now with a closed port. Our trade’s been finished entirely for six months. We’re three mobs, and a scattering of loners; we’re all that are left. And how many new recruits do you get? Not enough to take the places of the men we lose, let alone build up our strength. I give us just about another six months of this life and we
will
be finished.”
Again the mutter ran about the fire-lit circle. Ebers took up the argument.
“And
you
think, Hogan,” he accented the “you” in a way Joktar guessed was intended to needle Samms, “that this plan does have a chance?”
“Oh, the odds against its success are high enough. But would you rather finish really blasting Harband where it will hurt, or let company guards, bad weather and luck whittle you down to nothing out here? And there is a slim chance we may be able to pull it off. Samms has Perks planted, remember?”
“I dunno,” Ebers answered slowly, but his protest was not so sharp.
Samms jerked a thumb at the body rolled against the wall of the cone. “We lost one man here today. You don’t know how many more might have been caught in the blanket. Better for a man to go down fighting than this way.”
“I have two raiding parties out. I’ll have to recall those. And there are maybe some loners who’d join with us. Roughly, maybe fifty. But I won’t take any but volunteers.”
“Good enough. And I ought to do as well. You, Samms?”
“Thirty—forty—if I can talk some of the loners in,” he spoke absently, as if his mind were on another problem.
“Suppose we capture this ship and Rysdyke is able to fly her off-world. Who goes along to meet Cullan? We can’t load all our men on board.”
“A committee, I’d say,” Hogan replied. “The rest of our combined f
orces should hold the company compound if we’re successful. Those who stay can arm some of the emigrants. They may not be of use in the open, but they can help defend the domes.”
“For how long would we have to hold the compound?” Ebers wanted to know.
Hogan stood up. “This whole scheme is a matter of ifs, ands, and buts. But I agree, Samms has a point. We’d better risk a big gamble now than drift along as we have been doing. This ship combined with Cullan’s visit to Loki furnishes us with a chance. Even if we fail, Harband can’t sit on the news of our attack, and rumors alone could make things uncomfortable for the companies.”
“A lot of good that would do men already dead,” Ebers commented sourly. “Only maybe you’re right, this is a chance we won’t have again. Sounds like a mighty thin one though.”