The Game of Stars and Comets (2 page)

For clothing the native wore a sash-like length about the hips, the ends brought between the legs and drawn through the front band, to hang free to knee level, the material a tanned hide. But the collar about the native's neck proclaimed his slave status.

About three inches wide, that article fitted smoothly to the flesh, and Kade knew that its presence doomed the unfortunate Ikkinni to the lifelong servitude from the moment it was welded on. For that band was a guard, a taskmaster, a punishment in turn, by the whim of the Styor owner. Impulses broadcast miles away could transmit jolts of pain, or killing agony, to the slave. One could not escape by running.

Before the coming of the Styor, as far as the Terrans could learn, the Ikkinni had lived in loosely governed tribes, mostly in collections of two or more family clans. Intertribal war had existed, usually as a means of obtaining new wives or raising the prestige of the competing tribes. They had been wandering hunters, with the exception of some coastal fishermen and a handful of families who had settled in the highly fertile river bottoms to plant and harvest fruit and grain.

The farmers had been the first victims of the Styor aggression, the hunters retreating after a series of disastrous skirmishes into the mountains where freak air currents prevented the use of Styor aircraft. Slavers still led raids into those vast mountains and trapped Ikkinni with the same dispatch as the natives in turn netted the musti of the caves.

Kade noted the two spears and coiled net that the primitive in the tape scene carried. They were no defense against a blaster, a needler, or the supposedly innocuous stunner allowed Terran Traders on Styor-held worlds. And without any effective weapon, what chance had the poor devils ever had?

The Terran's hand had gone to the grip of the weapon riding on his own hip before he realized where that line of thought led. Tadder could happen all over again. He was thinking in the same pattern which had led to his disgrace there. Traders did not meddle. At the slightest hint of any involvement with local affairs outside the strict bounds of the service duties, their commanding officer shipped them back to base. He must remember. Remember and control his temper and instincts.

Kade adjusted the reader, called into being on its screen the list of Team personnel. Not that he could hope for any backing from those veterans if he blasted off orbit a second time.

"Shaka Abu, Commander." The click of words introduced his new superior officer. An Africo-Venusian, tough-looking, the slightest tinge of gray showing in his head lock. Perhaps not a particularly successful man or he wouldn't still be a Team leader in the field, but rather would occupy some position of greater authority at one of the sector bases.

"Che'in Lan." Younger, placid, something self-satisfied in his sleepy-eyed face.

"Jon Steel."

Kade curbed a start of surprise as he viewed the picture of not just a fellow Amerindian, but one, by the faint touch of paint between his brows, of the Lakota; a tribesman of the Sioux! This must be the man he replaced, the one who had died by violence. No team had more than one representative of any Terran race.

"Manuel Santoz." Kade hardly glanced at the last man on the list. He was too intent on Jon Steel, who had died on Klor. Again that sensation of a waiting trap. There were too many coincidences in all this.

Sure, many Armerindians were enlisted in the Service, the adventure of out-world duty was welcomed by the youth of the Federation of Tribes. But there were twenty or more of those tribes with numerous subdivisions. For a Lakota to replace a Lakota seemed hardly to come about by chance alone.

And Ristoff, because of his position, must have known that to send Kade to take the place of a dead tribal brother was to unleash an avenger. Or was this sequence of events a new and stiffer testing set up on purpose? If Kade followed the dictates of tribal custom and made trouble on Klor, then Ristoff would have him, space cold.

He slid his stunner from its holster, checked the charge now activating that side arm. The weapon could not kill, not with the diluted energy issued to Trade men, but it could knock an enemy insensible, to be dealt with in a more fatal fashion when and if opportunity offered.

However Kade had learned one lesson on Tadder: the need for caution. In the old, old days his kind had had a standard to measure skill and courage. One entered a hostile camp and exited again unharmed, undetected, bringing along an enemy's favorite war mount into the bargain. He'd play his own game. If Ristoff had set up a frame for some murky reason, he'd learn the why of that, too. Again there was that chill along his back, almost as if a coup stick had thudded home. And not a friendly one, no, not a friendly one at all!

When the
Marco Polo
broke out of hyper over Klor, Kade knew all the Terran records could tell him about that world. He could trace an accurate course from the most detailed maps available to the Traders, which included the musti hunting grounds in the mountains. For the Styor allowed hunting passes for periodic inspection of the trapped caves, to make certain that one section was not being denuded of breeding-stock. Such details were beneath the attention of the local lordling whose income might depend upon the result of a season's net work in the caverns.

In addition, the Terran had added to his storehouse of facts all points dealing with the Ikkinni, although limited, since the Styor did
not
encourage any anthropological research on the part of off-worlders. And he had tabulated his own findings concerning the methods and manners of the Styor, together with any modifications of those as listed by Terran observation on Klor. He had no idea of what lay ahead, save that the problem of Jon Steel's death was part of it. But in some way the doubts he had had in the waiting lounge on Lodi were backing his determination to do some investigating on his own.

He might have guessed that that was not going to be too easy, Kade thought a twenty-seven hour day later when he did at last have a measure of privacy. With a small staff, every member of the Team had been engaged in high-pressure work seeing to the disposition of the
Marco Polo
's cargo and the mountain of paper work to be discharged before the transport lifted again. Kade, with only hasty introductions to his fellows, had been so buried in details that after a full day and night on Klor, he still had only a confused impression of post and personnel.

There were Ikkinni porters in service, hired out from their Styor masters. And one of them now stood just within the door panel of Kade's room, his eyes with their ruddy pupils gathering extra fire from the atom lamp, his long fingers hooked into the front of his sash kilt.

"It wants?" Kade asked in the tongue he had learned as well as he could from the Hypo-trainer on ship board.

"It has." The Ikkinni reached back a foot, hooked limber toes about a package and pushed it from corridor to room, showing the usual reluctance of his people to the carrying of burdens. A Styor would have instantly punished that act of rebellion. Kade made no show of knowing the subtle defiance for what it was.

Neither did he move to pick up the packet, knowing that to do so would be to admit inferiority.

"It has where?" He looked carefully beyond the packet lying on the floor. Then, turning his back to the native, he busied himself with placing a pile of record tapes in a holder.

"It has here."

Kade glanced around. The packet now rested on his bunk. Since no one had witnessed the action which had put it there, honor on both sides had been maintained.

"It has my thanks for its courtesy." Deliberately the Terran used the warrior intonation.

Those red eyes met his. There was no change of expression which Kade could read on that down-covered face. With a quick movement the native disappeared through the half-open panel of the door. He might never have been there, save that the packet was on the bunk. Kade picked it up, read the official markings of the Research and Archives Division. Below them was a name: STEEL.

For a long moment he weighed the package in his hand. But the communication was not personal. And officially the contents might well be his business. He smothered a small twinge of guilt and stripped away the wrapping, eager to discover what had been so important that Jon Steel had sent to Base for aid.

Sample submitted has the following properties,
Kade read in the code-script of the Service. There was a listing of chemical symbols.
It will therefore ably nourish and support Terran herbivores without difficulty, being close in structure to the grama grass of our western continental plains.

Grama grass, suitable nourishment for Terran herbivores—Kade read the symbols a second time and then studied in turn the two accompanying enclosures, each sheathed in a plasta-protector. Both were wisps, perhaps a finger long, of dried vegetation carrying a seed head. One was a palish gray-brown. It could represent a tuft of Terran hay. The other was much darker, a dull, rusty red, and Kade thought it might have been pulled from roots in the plain stretching away beyond the outer wall of the Klorian post.

So, Steel had sent a selection of native grass to be analyzed. And, judging by the wording of this report, analyzed with a purpose in mind, to see if it could nourish some form of Terran animal life. Why?

Kade pulled down one of the wall-slung seats and sat before the desk, laying the grass on its surface. He knew this must be important. Important enough to be paid for by a man's life? Or did the report have anything at all to do with Steel's death? And how
had
he died? So far, none of the men Kade had met here had mentioned his predecessor. He must get access to Steel's report tapes, discover why a finger-thick roll of Klorian wild grass had been sent to Prime Base for analytical processing.

The clear chime of the mess call sounded and Kade unsealed his tunic, tucking the contents of the packet into his inner valuables belt for the safest keeping he knew.

To join any established Team was never easy for the newcomer. In addition Kade knew that Abu had been duly warned concerning his glaring misdeed of the immediate past. He would need strong self-control and his wits to last out the probationary period the others would put him through. And, had he not had this private mystery to chew upon, he might have dreaded his first session with his new Teammates more.

But there was no outward strain in the mess hall where the odors of several exotic dishes mingled. Each man ate rather absently while he dealt with his own newly arrived pile of private message flimsies, catching up with the concerns off Klor which had meaning for him. And Kade was free to study the assortment of Terrans without having to be too subtle in appraisement.

Commander Abu ate stolidly, as an engine might refuel, his attention held by the reader through which a united strip of flimsies crawled at a pace which suggested that either the Team leader was not a swift-sighter, or else that there was enough solid meat in his messages to entail complete concentration.

On the other hand, Che'in's round face betrayed a variety of fleeting emotions with the mobility of a Tri-Vee actor as one flimsy after another flicked in and out of his reader. Now and then he clucked indignantly, made a sound approaching a glutton's lip-smacking, or chuckled, entering all the way into the spirit of his personal mail.

The third man, Santoz, had yet another method. Reading a flimsy selected from one pile before him, he would detach it from his machine, place it on a second heap, and stare at the wall while he chewed and swallowed several mouthfuls before beginning the process all over again. Kade was trying to deduce character traits from the actions of his three tablemates when one of the Ikkinni materialized by the door. Without turning his head Abu asked in the Trade speech:

"It comes. Why?"

"It has concern." But no inflection of that slurred speech suggested great emotion.

"It has concern. Why?"

"The furred thing from the stars cries aloud."

Abu looked at Kade. "This comes under your department, Whitehawk. I understand you have had vet training. That bear is important to our relations with the High-Lord-Pac. Better take a look right away."

Kade followed the native to the courtyard, close to the smaller warehouse where the more valuable trade articles were stored. Now he could hear the whining snuffle of his patient. The cage crate he had seen ready to be loaded at Lodi stood here under the protecting overhang of the warehouse roof, and its inhabitant was not only awake but distinctly unhappy.

The Terran squatted on his heels before the cage to see that the captive was indeed a Terran bear, about half grown, a white collar of fur across the chest showing in contrast to the rest of a dark pelt now linted with wisps of protective bedding.

Any bear shipped off-world would have come from one of the special breeding farms, the docile descendant of generations that had lived with mankind and been domesticated to such cohabitation. But no space trip, even taken in a drugged state, could have left the animal anything but nervous. And the captive in the cage was decidedly woebegone.

At Kade's soothing hiss the animal crowded closer to the restraining bars, peered at him, and uttered a whine, low pitched and coaxing.

The Trader read the label sealed to the top of the shipping cage. The bear was consigned to the High-Lord-Pac himself. No wonder it was necessary to see that such an astronomically expensive shipment arrived in the best condition. Kade fingered the lock, eased the front to the pavement of the courtyard. He heard a stir behind him, guessed the Ikkinni had lingered to watch.

Would the distinctive, strange body odor of the native have any effect on the bear? Kade motioned with one hand, hoping that the Ikkinni could properly interpret the order to withdraw.

Even though the cage was now open, the bear hesitated, pacing back and forth as if still facing a barrier, and whined.

"Come, boy. Soooo. There is nothing to be afraid of," Kade coaxed. He held out his hand, not to touch but to be touched, to have that black button of a nose sniff inquiringly along his fingers, across the back of his hand, up his arm, as the bear, as if pulled by a familiar scent, came out of the cage.