Chapter V: Part 5

Yann groaned and retched. "I'm sick."

"You'll be sicker." Trehearne got him by the hair of the head, standing carefully and watching for any sudden move, and dragged him half erect. "Sit up and talk like a man. Why did you undo all your good work? You could have let me die right there."

Yann shook his head. "You were blundering straight into the others. Somebody was going to save you, and I figured it might as well be me. If you had any suspicions you'd switch them to someone else. Make it easier next time." His mouth twisted into a parody of a grin. "It did."

Trehearne said, "You're a hell of a nice guy." His hand moved and light flickered on the crystal knife. Yann's eyes were drawn to it.

"This wasn't my idea," he said. "I was only doing a job. You don't have to kill me." He put an emphasis on the pronoun.

"I don't have to. It's whether I want to or not. Whose idea was it, Yann?"

"He was going to give me a ship," Yann muttered. "A ship of my own. Any man would do it for a price like that. You'd do it yourself, Trehearne. That's just common sense."

Trehearne said, "Who offered you the ship?"

"Kerrel. You go fight it out with him. I've got nothing against you, Trehearne. Kerrel explained to me that it wasn't murder to put you out of the way, but a service to the whole Vardda community, and this was the only way he could do it. But I'm not interested in politics. This was just a business deal for me. One life, one ship."

"Kerrel isn't rich. Where was he going to get hold of a ship to give away?"

"I guess he had a deal in mind. Maybe that depended, too, on your not coming back. I don't know. Anyway, I can prove it was Kerrel. Here, I've got the whole business in writing. I'm no fool. Agent of the Council or not, a man's a man...." Still talking, still scowling, Yann dug into his tunic pocket. An instant later, an instant too late, Trehearne realized that by no possibility would Kerrel ever put such things in writing. He moved, fast.

The shocker came out of Yann's pocket, the weapon he wouldn't carry openly because Kurat would be offended, the weapon he had not left behind in the compound. Trehearne hit him just before the business end, the prism, cleared the silk cloth of Yann's tunic. He hit him with both hands, and he hadn't exactly forgotten the hunting knife with the razor edge, but he didn't care now, he didn't want to be laid out stunned and senseless by the shock-beam so that Yann could have his ship and Kerrel could have Shairn and the hounds could have their bellies full of meat. He hit him hard and rolled him over and rolled over with him. The shocker went skittering away, hitting the wall with a sharp click. Trehearne scrambled frantically to get to his feet first, but he didn't need to hurry. Yann was not going to get up any more. The shining haft of the knife was standing out of Yann's chest. It rose and fell a couple of times, and then it stopped. There was not much blood around it.

Torin broke the silence. "Will you kill the other one, too?" He jerked his head toward the door. Beyond it in the clearing Kurat was bawling at his yapping hounds.

Trehearne thought. He thought rapidly and clearly, and that was odd because there was a sickness in his belly, and a kind of shaking on him. After a moment he said, "No. There's a better way."

He went and picked up the shocker that had belonged to Yann. Then he leaned over and took the slack of Yann's collar in his free hand and dragged him outside. He was very heavy, and his head lolled back against Trehearne's wrist.

Kurat turned and came toward the hut. There was a happy look on his face. He was a happy man. He had done a good job, for good pay. And then he saw Trehearne, and the shocker, and Yann lying on the ground where Trehearne had dropped him. Something queer and ludicrous happened to the face of Kurat.

Trehearne pointed. "There's a native hunter's knife in his heart. You killed him, Kurat. I saw you do it."

Kurat made a sound like something that has stepped into a snare and feels it closing. "I didn't. You lie, you know I...."

"You killed a Vardda," Trehearne said. "You were quarrelling over the wine, and you put the knife into him, so. That was wrong of you, Kurat. I don't think the other Vardda will like it. I would go away, if I were you. I would take my hounds and my family and go a long way off into the forest."

Kurat stared for a moment into Trehearne's eyes. Then he looked at Yann. Then he turned and shouted up his bleeding hounds, saying no word but shouting with a curious raw edge to his voice, and went with them into the forest, running.

He was, Trehearne thought, no fool. He knew what Vardda vengeance could be, and he knew what his word would be worth against a Vardda. He did not think the factory would see Kurat again for many years. And he was glad. Kurat's disappearance would save Trehearne many explanations. He did not want to tell to anyone now the truth of how and why Yann had died.

He did not want to talk about it except to one man.

FOURTEEN

Torin's parents came back into the clearing a few minutes later. The woman had three hounds leashed, all of them bleeding and one going on three legs. In his hand, by its loose scruff, the man carried the fourth one, dead. He flung it down at Torin's feet.

"There's your work," he said. "Two of the others will not hunt for days. We will go hungry because my son is a fool."

Then he saw Yann's body, and started back, looking swiftly at Trehearne.

"Kurat killed him," said Trehearne. "I'll take his body back to the ship. There will not be any trouble."

"I will help you," Torin said.

The man said nothing. He stood running his hard hands nervously up and down on his bare belly, a man oppressed by fate. The woman turned silently away to tie the hounds again. Trehearne took off his belt and pried two of the jewel stones out of it. They were not of the best, but to these people they were riches. He would have given them Yann's belt, which was more valuable, but he was afraid it would make them trouble when they tried to barter it. He put the two stones in the man's palm.

"Those will pay for your hounds. I'll leave word with the factor that they were not stolen. Just don't do anything till after the ship is gone." He lifted up Yann's body and laid it over his shoulder. "Come on, my friend Torin. Let's go."

He walked out across the clearing, and Torin came with him, pointing out the path. When they were out of hearing, he said to Trehearne, "I would like it if you could forgive my parents. To me they are good and kind, but they do not understand the Vardda."

"Perhaps they do," Trehearne said. "Better than you know."

It was morning when they reached the compound, a green morning oppressed with heat. Trehearne was ready to drop, and even the boy was weary. Yann had been a heavy burden, shared between them. But all the way he had talked of the great ship. He would accept no other gift but that, to see the ship, and he pleaded so that Trehearne had not the heart to refuse him. After all, it was little enough reward for what the boy had done.

"You will have to wait, though, perhaps a long while. I will have to do much talking, about _him_."

"I will wait," said Torin, smiling. "I have waited all my life."

It was the last great day of the trading and all the Vardda were inside the compound except one man who guarded the _Saarga_. The hatches were closed. Only the airlock port was open and the guard sat in front of it, yawning in the heat. He quit yawning when he saw Yann's body.

Things were a little confused for Trehearne for a while. He talked, and then he patiently endured the tongue-lashing the skipper gave him. It was a rough one, such as a man deserved who would go drinking with a comrade and pass out and let his comrade be killed by natives. But when it was over there was nothing to do but order Yann buried and go on with the last trading. Trehearne was glad that Rohan and Perri were too busy right now to ask questions. When it was all finished he found Torin and went with him to the airlock port and spoke to the guard.

"He helped me out there. Maybe he saved my life. I promised him a look around."

The guard looked doubtful. "It's against the rules. The Old Man would have my head if he found out."

"How can he find out? He's busy. Don't worry, I'll see the boy gets clear of the ship. You can look the other way."

The guard could not withstand Torin's hungry gaze. He was a family man, with sons of his own. "Well--all right. Only be sure you get the kid out again--fast!"

Trehearne saw to it. He showed Torin what he could, from the bridge to the generator rooms, and the boy trod softly as though he were in a holy place, touching, sighing, wondering. Trehearne was sorry he had brought him. It was pitiful to see all that longing that could never be fulfilled. He pressed upon Torin what few trinkets from other star-worlds he had in his own possession and then led him out from the ship and stood with the guard, watching the boy go slowly away across the field, looking back, always back, until he was lost behind the compound wall.

"Poor little beggar," said the guard. "Star-crazy, like all the rest of them. Well, he'll get over it."

"I suppose so," said Trehearne, and was glad that he would not see Torin again.

He found the doctor and had himself patched up, and after that he was busy checking lading. He was dead for sleep, and it seemed an eternity until, toward midnight, the cargo was all aboard and the hatches locked. The _Saarga_ lifted into the star-shot sky, and the acceleration built and built to the thrust of the humming generators.

Trehearne told Rohan and Perri that he was too played out to talk about what had happened, and tumbled into his bunk. He was almost instantly asleep--and almost as instantly awake again.

There was a screaming in the ship....

They found Torin lying beside the well that led up from the hold. He had made it that far. His skin was already darkened with the subcutaneous hemorrhage, his body twisted and writhing, his face almost unrecognizable. And he screamed and would not stop.

Trehearne held him and watched him die.

It seemed to take a long, long time. It was not a clean death. It was dissolution. Trehearne remembered his own torment and there was nothing he could do. The others watched also with sick white faces. In the end it was the guard who went to fetch a cloth to wrap the body in, and there were tears on his cheeks.

Trehearne laid Torin on the sheet. His flesh was not hard any more. He was no longer straight and well made. He was not even a dead boy. He was a rag, a shapelessness, an obscenity. It crossed Trehearne's mind how nearly he had come to dying that same death.

He got up. He returned to his cabin, stripped and scrubbed himself in a kind of frenzy. He kicked his sodden garments into the corridor for someone else to deal with. He could not touch them again. And all the time he heard Torin's voice crying, "Surely I am strong enough to go out and see the stars!"

They came a little later and told Trehearne that they had found where Torin had hidden himself under the wrappings of a bale, to be carried aboard with the cargo.

"It wasn't your fault," they told him. "There was no way you could have seen the boy."

Trehearne was not comforted.

They buried Torin in deep space, to drift forever among the Suns of Hercules. And Trehearne thought of a hut, of a man and a woman who were waiting for their son to come home. He wished that Torin had listened to the wisdom of his father.

The _Saarga_ tramped her way onward among the worlds of the Cluster. Time and events gave Trehearne other things to think about. He was a starman now, tested and hardened, a functioning part of his environment. His horizons were boundless and the stars had not lost their lustre. But somehow, even so, the first fine flush of glory was gone.

He remembered the bitterness of the woman who had said, "You are free and I am chained and my children after me forever." He remembered the countless young men who hungered, the eyes of children wide with dreams. Each time he saw the new-healed scars on his body he remembered the boy who had dressed those wounds and found the Vardda flesh no different from his own--a treachery too subtle for his understanding.

Over and over, when he slept, he held Torin in his arms and watched him die.

He told himself that it was all wasted pity. Whatever had been done to Orthis long ago was not his doing. Things were as they were and there was no help for it. He was one of the lucky ones and he should be content with that. Most of the time he was content. But now and again there would come the small sharp doubts, the creeping sense of guilt.

If only Torin had not come aboard the ship to die!

He needed to talk to Edri. He needed to ease his mind, to get things straight with himself, and he knew that Edri would understand.

He was glad when they started the long haul back to Llyrdis. He discovered that much as he wanted to see Edri, he wanted even more to see Shairn. He wondered if she had forgotten him by now or if she would be waiting when he landed.

The _Saarga_ made her worldfall at last under the tawny-red glare of Aldebaran. Trehearne watched the golden planet rush and grow toward the ship. He cheered with the others at the first sight of home and did not think it odd that he should strain as eagerly as they to see the familiar towers of the city rising out of the mountain-girdled plain.

When the freighter found her dock and wallowed into it, Joris was on hand to watch his ship come in. He had been in contact with the _Saarga_ by ultra-wave radio and now he boarded her before the ports were fairly open. The skipper had given him good news of the venture and he was in jovial spirits, clapping shoulders all around, peering at manifests, firing questions, demanding to know how Trehearne had acquitted himself.

"A good voyage, eh?" he cried. "Too bad about Yann, but any voyage through the Cluster is a good one if only one gets killed!"

Trehearne said bitterly, "Someone else did."

Joris stared at him, uncomprehending.

"Oh, not one of the crew. A native boy, crazy to fly the stars. He stowed away."

All the light went out of Joris' face, leaving it bleak. It was a long time before he spoke and then it was only to make a routine statement about the ship. He seemed to have lost all his joy in it. Trehearne was surprised at the impact that those few words about a nameless boy had had on the old man.

Joris left soon after. He told Trehearne, "I'll see you in a day or so. Meanwhile I think Shairn is waiting for you at the sector gate." He spoke as though his mind were not really on what he was saying. He turned away, then hesitated, and asked, "How old was that boy, Trehearne?"

"About sixteen."

Joris nodded. He walked away across the apron as though he carried on his massive shoulders some heavy burden that weighed them down. Trehearne signed over his manifests to the port official in charge of unloading and went in search of Shairn.

She stood outside the great barred gate, watching for him. She was just as beautiful as he remembered.

He said, "You haven't forgotten me then?"

"No. Did you expect me to?"

"I wouldn't have been surprised."

She laughed--the sweet familiar laughter spiced with mockery. "You're a wise man." She cocked her head back and studied him. "You've changed. You've got so brown and hard and--older. I think I like you even better now. But I'll have to learn to know you all over again." She pulled him toward the long, sleek vehicle that waited. "It will be nice," she said, "this getting acquainted again!"

The broad road took them northward along the coast, away from the clamoring spaceport and the city. The cliffs rose from the golden sea, wild and forbidding.

She asked suddenly, "Where did you get that?"

His sleeve had fallen back and she was looking at the scars on his wrist.

"Someone set the hounds on me," Trehearne answered indifferently. Then, "By the way, how is Kerrel?"

"I haven't seen him." She glanced at the scars again. "How did he work it?"

"How did who work what?"

"Oh, stop trying to be subtle! I had a feeling that Kerrel might arrange something for that voyage. He's not a man who takes his defeats lightly."

Trehearne told her briefly the story of Yann and the hounds. He finished, "I want to see Kerrel."

"You will!" Shairn's eyes sparkled. "And I want to be there when you do!"

The car swung around a curve and there on its great crag loomed the Silver Tower--Shairn's ancestral home, built by generations of Vardda men and women who had reached out with strong hands to grasp the stars.

For a time, with Shairn, he forgot about Kerrel and Torin and all the things that preyed upon his mind. He only knew that it was very good to be here. It was evening when he was again reminded of them. They were sitting in the gallery, sipping the sharp, cold wines, and Shairn said, "Are you happy, Michael?"

He remembered another time when she had asked that question--the night that Edri had walked away alone down the avenue of trees. He remembered Edri crying out in the dark against injustice, and instantly the old restlessness was back upon him.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I'm happy." He turned the wine-glass in his hands, brooding. "Shairn, could you get Edri out here? I'd like to see him."

He felt her stiffen and draw away and he thought that she was angry with him. He went on, "I didn't mean now. Tomorrow's time enough. But I--well, I want to talk to him."

"You're fond of Edri, aren't you?"

"He was a good friend to me."

"Yes--and to me." She was silent for a moment and then she turned around. "You might as well know now as later. Edri was arrested a month ago."

Trehearne sprang up. "Arrested?"

"Yes. They sentenced him yesterday. Exile to Thuvis--for the rest of his natural life."

FIFTEEN

For a moment Trehearne stood still like a man stunned. _Thuvis--for the rest of his natural life!_

He remembered that dark, inexpressibly lonely world of a dying sun that Shairn had shown him in the microfilm viewer, on the way from Earth.

"No," he said. "Not Edri. There must be some mistake."

Shairn shook her head. "I wish there were but there isn't. Edri is an Orthist, caught, confessed and convicted. He was unable even to offer a defense."

She turned away from him. "I don't like it either. But Edri knew what he was doing. He brought this on himself."

Trehearne asked, "What happened?"

"You remember that night in the wine garden when Kerrel spoke of a man named Arrin who had been arrested?"

"Yes. He was a friend of Edri's."

"Well, they couldn't find Arrin's papers. They wanted them very badly. It seemed that Arrin had found some clue to the course of Orthis' ship, on that last voyage when it was lost, and had been making calculations."

She paused, then added grimly, "Kerrel got the idea that Edri had those papers."

Trehearne's yellow eyes took on a peculiarly evil glint. "Then Kerrel was at the bottom of this?"

"Yes. It was his duty as agent of the Council to investigate, and he did, and very cleverly. Well, Edri had the papers all right, and more of his own."

Trehearne groaned. "The idealistic fool! Why wasn't he satisfied to be a Vardda himself, without worrying about the rest of the galaxy!"

Shairn seemed relieved. Then, "That's what _I_ said! But knowing your friendship for Edri, I was afraid you'd lose your head when you heard."

She went on quickly. "I know you'll have a reckoning with Kerrel over this and your own score. But you'll have to be careful since he's a Council agent. I can help you--"

But Shairn's voice faded out of Trehearne's hearing except for that one phrase.

"--_knowing your friendship for Edri_--"

Yes, Edri had been his friend. He was sorry for Edri. But should he let friendship be a chain to drag him back down from all that he had dreamed and desired and finally achieved?

No! He would not let himself be trapped by friendship and by pity! He had been merely indulging in emotionalism, to sympathize as he had with the non-Vardda peoples' hunger for star-freedom, to remember as he had the hopeless longing in their eyes, to brood as he had over the dying of Torin.

A sick fatal foreboding grew in Trehearne as he realized the decision shaping in his mind. He knew that it was shaped by emotion, not by reason, and he felt a savage contempt for his own weakness.

He spoke, interrupting Shairn. "I'm sorry, Shairn, I was thinking. And I think I've got to try to help Edri."

She stopped, looking at him with wide steady eyes. Then, rapidly, "Michael! Don't be a fool!"

He smiled mirthlessly. "You've told me that before. I'm telling myself now. But it doesn't work. It seems that I'm determined to be a fool."

"You're taking it too tragically! After all, Edri's not going to be executed."

Remembering Edri's words about the fate of Arrin, Trehearne answered, "I think he'd almost prefer that. Exiled to a remote star, never to fly again, nothing to do but sit and wait for death--"

"But there's nothing you can do, Michael! He's convicted, sentenced. They're taking him off tonight. So there's an end to it."

Trehearne rose to his feet. "I'm going back to the city, Shairn."

"For what?"

"I'm going to see if I can get him away."

She understood then the full depth and danger of his thinking. She caught him fiercely by the arm.

"Are you going to throw away everything you've worked so hard to get for nothing? Remember, Edri's a traitor. No matter how good a friend he was to both of us he's a traitor and deserves his punishment."

"That's how you feel, is it?"

"Is there any other way I could feel? You know what the Orthists are as well as I do."

He said quietly, "I'm not sure I do. Perhaps you'd better tell me."

"They're destroyers. They want to ruin Llyrdis, the Vardda empire, everything as it is now." Her passionate voice took in the star-trails, the swift ships flying, the Vardda pride of race and achievement.

"Orthis had his laboratory in his ship. The secret of the Vardda mutation is there. They want to find that ship. They want to find the secret in it and spread it all across the Galaxy."

"Would it be so terrible," asked Trehearne, "if others should have the ability to fly the stars?"

She looked at him as though he had spoken blasphemy. He added, "Except, of course, that it would wreck the Vardda monopoly."

"That sounds very strange, coming from you," she said bitterly. "You, the outsider, who fought so hard to be a part of the monopoly. It looked pretty good to you then after thirty-three years of crawling in the mud of Earth!"

"I've seen more of it now. I've seen a boy die because of it. I don't think I like it any longer."

"You don't like it?" Her voice was low and passionate. "_You?_ And what do you know about it? _We_ earned the right to what we have. We were the first--first of all the races of the Galaxy to go into interstellar space. And we did it without mutation, without anything! Four generations that first voyage took. Four generations of children born in deep space, in a little ship crawling between the stars! No one else ever did that. No one else ever dared! And as for our wicked monopoly--it keeps the peace of the Galaxy. It keeps worlds alive that would have died. It brings wealth and comfort where they never were before. But _you_ don't like it and so it must be destroyed!"

She stopped for breath and then she whispered, "Kerrel was right about letting an outsider in. And I'm ashamed that I have loved you!"

She turned from him and went swiftly along the gallery. There was a purpose about the way she did it that made Trehearne uneasy. He followed her and found her at the visiphone. The screen was already brightening.

She looked at him with blazing eyes. "I fought once to get you into Llyrdis. Now I'll undo that mistake!"

He struck her away from the instrument and closed the switch. She was on him then like a cat, clawing him, calling him mongrel and freak and worse names, raging at his ingratitude. She was hard to hold but he held her and she could reach neither the visiphone nor the bell to call her servants.

He held her, and she laughed her mocking laugh at him. "All right. Go on, then. Go and make a fool of yourself, trying to free Edri. See how far you get. And remember that it's bad enough for a Vardda born to betray his people but for you--"

He held her a moment longer, swallowing his own rage, thinking. He could not let her go. The moment he left she would send out the alarm, denounce him to the Council, put an end both to his own freedom and to any remote hope he might have of helping Edri.

It took him only a few seconds to decide. In the mood he was in, it was not difficult to strike the necessary, carefully-calculated blow.

He carried her out to the car in his arms. If any of the servants saw them it would look very sweet, very romantic, her dark head on his shoulder, her arms around his neck. They would not be able to see that her wrists were tied.

He put her down gently in the padded seat. She did not stir. There was the shadow of a bruise already forming on her chin. He got in beside her and sent the car humming down the wide road that led to the city.

When he was far enough away from the tower he stopped. He bound Shairn securely with strips torn from her own garments, taking especial care with the gag. He arranged her on the floor as comfortably as he could, out of sight. Then he drove on and did not stop again until he reached the spaceport.

The lights were still on in the office of Joris. Probably he would stay late tonight, to oversee the business of taking Edri away in the prison ship. Trehearne felt guilty about Joris, almost as though he were betraying his own father. The old man had been good to him.

Shairn seemed to be safely unconscious. Trehearne left the car where it would be least likely to attract attention, and went into the Administration Building. He had only the vague beginnings of a plan in his mind but whatever he did it would have to start here.

The roar and bustle of the spaceport were not diminished by darkness. Some of the Vardda officers he knew. They hailed him as he passed them in the corridors, congratulating him on his voyage, asking him when he was going out again. Trehearne almost faltered then, thinking what a fool he was to give up all this for an idle hope. And then he remembered Edri and went on. Edri had done his best for him when he needed it, whether it was foolish or not. It seemed that he could not do less for Edri.

The lift took him up to the high room that was like the bridge of a starship that would never fly. Joris was there. He was quite alone. He had been drinking for some time but he was not drunk. He looked up when Trehearne came in and his eyes were heavy and rimmed with red.

"What do you want?" he said.

"A favor."

"Another time, Trehearne. Get out. Get the hell out."

"Another time won't do." Trehearne leaned over the table. "They're taking Edri out for Thuvis tonight. I want to say good-bye to him, Joris. That's all, just a word before he goes. Tell me what ship it is and where--or if you can't do that tell me what sector and I'll see him outside the gate."

"That's right," said Joris. "You're a friend of Edri's." He reached for the wine bottle. There was an empty one beside it and another on the floor. "How good a friend, Trehearne? That's what I'd like to know. How _good_ a friend?"

His bloodshot gaze was sharp and very shrewd.

Trehearne said angrily, "You know I'm not mixed up with him. You know where I've been."

"Yes, I know. You've been watching a young boy die in space. What did you think when you saw that, Trehearne? How did you feel?"

"Let's not talk about that," said Trehearne harshly. "Tell me where I can see Edri and when. That isn't much to ask, Joris, just a minute to say good-bye."

"A boy sixteen," whispered Joris, "full of hope, full of longing, proud of his strength.... I ought to hate you, Trehearne. You're not even half Vardda in the ordinary way and yet you can fly the stars."

He filled his glass again and emptied it. His hands were steady. He was neither drunk nor maudlin. And yet there were tears in his eyes. Trehearne saw them and was somehow shocked. It did not seem possible that Joris could weep.

"Joris," he said gently, "forget about the boy. Let me see Edri."

Again the red-rimmed leaden gaze locked with his, weighing, measuring. "I like you, Trehearne. So I'll tell you again. Get out. Go away. Forget you ever came here."

Trehearne did not move. Abruptly Joris picked up the empty bottle and flung it, not at him but near him. "Get out, you fool! I'm giving you a chance to go!"

There was nothing to do but obey. Trehearne moved toward the door, thinking angrily that he would have to risk the sector map in Operations. He stretched out his hand to the latch and the door opened under it fast and he was looking straight into the prism lens of a shock tube, held by a tall spaceport guard. Shairn was beside the guard.

The guard said, "Back up."

Trehearne backed. He looked at Shairn. "I should have clipped you again to make sure."

"You should. I got my feet loose quite easily. This silk is pretty flimsy stuff." She walked past him toward Joris. The guard came in and closed the door, setting his back against it.

Joris demanded, "What's all this about?"

"I found her out by the gate," the guard said. "She was gagged and her hands were tied."

"Trehearne," said Shairn to Joris. "He's an Orthist. He came here to help Edri escape."

"Did he!" said Joris. "Did he now!" He looked at Trehearne. "You stand where you are. Don't try anything." He reached into a drawer of the table and covered him with the lens of another tube.

"An Orthist, eh?" he said softly. He began to laugh.

SIXTEEN

Shairn sat down on the edge of Joris' table. She smiled at Trehearne and in this moment he hated her. He looked from Joris to the guard and back again and did nothing. There was nothing then that he could do.

"Would you have believed it of him, Joris?" said Shairn. "Would you have thought that he could turn on us after all we did for him?"

Joris leaned back in his chair. "Shairn," he said, "I'm sorry it had to be this way."

"Yes," she answered, and then added bitterly, "Kerrel was right about him, after all."

Joris said, "That isn't what I mean."

Something in his tone made Shairn turn and look at him. He went on. "I'm sorry you got yourself into this. You're only doing what you believe to be right. But so is Trehearne. _So am I._"

He dropped his bombshell so quietly that for a moment neither Shairn nor Trehearne could quite believe that they had understood him.

Shairn got up off the edge of the table. She backed away, her eyes fixed on Joris in horrified incredulity. "You, Joris! You an Orthist!" Her tone made the words a denial.

But Joris nodded and said, "Yes."

Abruptly, Trehearne laughed. Shairn swung around. "You heard?" she said to the guard. "Arrest Joris!"

The guard shook his head and smiled. "Hardly. I'm Joris' man."

It was Shairn's turn now to stand like a trapped thing, searching for escape and not finding it.

Trehearne said, "May I move now?" His voice was a bit shaky with relief.

Joris grinned. "I didn't want you throwing yourself around. Somebody might have got hurt. Yes, you can move."

Shairn burst out. "I can't understand this, Joris! You, of all people--it's insane!"

"Perhaps. But I think Trehearne would understand." He scowled at his own hands, brooding, and then he said, "It doesn't matter who knows now. I did the forbidden thing. I married a woman of another world, a non-Vardda. I had a son. He wanted to fly the stars. He used to beg me to take him aboard my ship. After all, he was my son, half-Vardda. He thought he could do it. He hid himself away in my cabin and--the Vardda blood had not bred true in him." He glanced briefly at Trehearne. "He was not quite eighteen. I never flew another voyage after that."

He got up, kicking the empty bottle away. "I guess that was why I first gave Trehearne his chance. It seemed to make up in a way for--"

He broke off abruptly. "Well, that's over and done with. We have other things to think about and not much time to do them in. Trehearne, you've upset my plans rather badly by fetching in Miss Spitfire here."

"It wasn't intentional." He went to Joris. "Is it true then? You're going to get Edri free?"

"I'm going to try. You see, this is a thing I could only do once. I've had to sit here for years, watching more than one good man go out to Thuvis, waiting--waiting for the time when I could make my action really count. Now it's here." He turned and glowered at Shairn. "The main question is--what are we going to do with you?"

She answered him angrily and without fear. "Whatever you do you'll live to regret it!"

"H'm," said Joris. "Tie her up again, Trehearne."

He did so with immense pleasure. This time he used stouter bonds and took extra pains with the knots.

Joris paced up and down, thinking hard. "I hate to say this but there's only one place I know of where there's no danger of her being found before we're gone. And that's aboard the ship."

The guard said, "There won't be any time to get her off again."

"I know it," said Joris grimly. "So it looks as though we'll have an extra passenger."

Trehearne had finished with the gag. He looked at Shairn. Her eyes burned and her face was white above the cloth.

Joris threw his cloak over her. "Take her down in my private lift," he told the guard. "The sector has already been cleared, so you won't have any trouble there. Get her aboard and make damned sure she's locked in."

The guard nodded. He picked up the cloak-wrapped bundle and put it over his shoulder. The buzzer of the visiphone made a sudden jarring sound. Joris motioned the man to hurry, waited until he was gone before answering. Trehearne pressed himself back against the wall, out of range of the screen.

Kerrel's voice said, "Joris--we're bringing Edri down in exactly fifteen minutes. Is everything ready?"

Joris nodded. "The sector is cleared, the guards are posted and the ship is ready for take-off."

"Good. There's a good bit of feeling about this business and we don't want any trouble."

"I've seen to it," Joris told him.

The screen went dark. "The swine!" said Joris. "He's only doing what he believes is right but he's so bloody smug about it. Agent of the Council! Bah!"

Unexpectedly he caught Trehearne's shoulders in a bearlike grip that nearly broke them.

"I'm glad you're with us. Are you armed?"

"Yes."

"Come on, then. This is the end of my waiting. I'm going back to space, Trehearne! I'm going to do the things I knew I'd have to do some day after I watched my son die. Come on then--move!"

They went down in the tiny private lift and out of the building to a guarded sector where the lights burned brightly over silent ships, where there were no swarming mobs of non-Vardda workmen, no clatter of machinery and whizzing of busy trams, only the deserted aprons of the great docks and the empty spaces between them.

As they went Joris told Trehearne what he had to do. "Only the guards at the gate, and the four who will pick up Kerrel's men when they come through belong to me. The others, we hope, will be too far away to interfere. But we'll have no time to linger."

"Where is the prison ship?"

"I spotted that at the far end of the sector. And they'll find its generators shot when they try to follow us. The Orthists are strong among the non-Vardda. The mechanics were glad to do that little job for me!"

Joris spoke briefly to the guards about Trehearne. They nodded a welcome. "In about ten minutes," Joris said. "Is the girl aboard?"

"All secure, sir."

"Good. Come along, Trehearne." He led the way past two of the towering docks. By the time they reached the third they were out of sight and hearing of the gate. In this third dock was a long rakish starship, lightless and silent, all hatches closed except the port.

"The _Mirzim_, the ship we're taking," said Joris. "A long-distance light trader, built for speed. Well, we'll need that. It belongs, by the way, to a good friend of mine. He'll have to collect from the two good cargo ships I'm leaving behind." He added, "The crew's waiting inside now. Only a half-crew really--not many navigators and technicians are dependable Orthists."

He stationed Trehearne in the shadows under the corner of the apron. "We'll jump them right here. Try not to kill anyone. As soon as Edri is free make for the _Mirzim_."

"Right." Trehearne settled back into the patch of darkness, hidden from anyone walking past in the areaway. He held his shock-tube ready in his hand. Joris was already gone, heading back to the gate.

Trehearne listened to the sounds of the spaceport. The sharp smell of the sea was in the wind, and in the distance he could see the shining towers of the city. He thought that this was probably the last time he would ever see Llyrdis. He knew a stabbing pang of regret. And then, coming from the direction of the gate, he heard the rhythmic tramp of perhaps a dozen men, moving at a brisk pace toward him. He was glad that the wait was no longer.

He did not move but his body quivered, settling itself.

There was Joris, walking first with Kerrel. There were four men without uniforms. There was a fifth man and beside him Edri, with his right wrist linked to the man's left. There were four more men without uniforms, then four of Joris' guards.

The head of the little column passed the corner of the third dock. The four guards broke rank and pulled out their shock tubes, aiming the pallid beams at an angle to avoid hitting Edri.

Trehearne sprang out and joined them.

Three of Kerrel's men went down on that first assault. Two were unconscious but one could still use his shocker. Joris had caught Kerrel unawares and knocked him down with nothing more than his great hammer of a fist. He pulled out his own weapon then and waded in.

A vicious dogfight began, swirling around with Edri as its center. Edri grappled with his guard and they fell, both struggling, both hampered by the fetters.

Both sides quit using the shockers. The fighting was too close for that, a small blundering nasty melee of fists and feet, men stumbling over each other, hitting the wrong people in their haste, going down, getting up again, shouting for help, swearing, astonished, furious.

Trehearne, trying to get to Edri, smashed one man solidly in the face and sent another staggering. Then he was tripped and was kicked as he went down. He found himself sprawling on top of Edri, who grunted and struck at him, then said, "Oh, it's you. The key is in his belt."

Trehearne chopped down with his fist. The man's head rang on the concrete. He lay still and Trehearne found the key. Then a heavy weight descended on him from behind, grinding his face into the cement. The hand that held the key was pinioned in an iron grip. He thrashed about, trying to unseat his attacker, and in the meantime Edri had grabbed his hand as well, wrenching and clawing with a single-minded determination to have the key.

He got it. Trehearne managed to get his knees under him and roll. He saw Kerrel's face close to his. In a second the two men had each other by the throat. They strained together, breast to breast, like two lovers, kicked and tramped by the feet of other men, oblivious. Edri got free and rose. He would have struck Kerrel but Trehearne gasped, "No! I'll handle him!"

Kerrel smiled, an anguished baring of the teeth. His thumbs bit hard into Trehearne's neck. Trehearne let go of Kerrel's throat. He bunched his two fists together and struck upward. Kerrel's head snapped back. His hands loosened. Trehearne tore them away. He threw himself on top of Kerrel. He hit him hard in the face until Kerrel's head rolled like the head of a dead man.

Hands grasped him and tried to drag him away. He shook them off. Kerrel moaned and turned on his side. Trehearne kicked him with his sandalled feet. "That's for Yann," he grunted. "That's for the hounds and for Torin."

A voice roared at him. "Leave it, damn you! Leave it!" A very strong arm thrust him aside. He recognized Joris. There were distant sounds of shouting, coming closer. Kerrel's men were down or scattered. Their own men were running for the _Mirzim_, dragging with them several who were stunned or partly paralyzed. Edri, with a bleeding face, was capering joyously and yelling at him to hurry.

Trehearne shook his head to clear it. He ran beside Joris, stumbling up the metal stair to the apron. He was the last one through the port. Joris hauled down a lever and the port closed and locked itself automatically with a squeal of compressed air.

Instantly the lights went on. The great generators jarred to life. Joris strode heavily down the long corridor to the bridge with Trehearne at his heels. There was another man sitting there but Joris took over the pilot chair.

Trehearne waited tensely but Joris did not touch the controls. He merely sat there, inspecting his bruised fists.

"What the hell are you waiting for?" Trehearne cried. "We've only got a few moments at most!"

Joris looked at him stolidly. "We've only got one life too. We can throw it away by starting at the wrong moment and colliding with incoming ships. I know the dispatch-schedules. Wait."

Trehearne waited. He could not hear inside the ship but he knew that by now alarms must be shrilling all over the spaceport. It was mad to wait. It was craven surrender. Better to run any risk of suicidal collision than to wait....

And still Joris waited, an eye cocked on the chronometers, until through the window Trehearne saw lights flashing up outside and men running. And then he glimpsed the loom of a great ship slanting down out of the sky, over and past them.

Joris grunted, suddenly punched the controls. "Hang on!"

The _Mirzim_ went up in a screaming arc that crumpled Trehearne to the deck. He clung to a stanchion and prayed that Joris had not lost his skill.

He had not. Even the Vardda flesh had limits. So did metal and the bones of ships. Joris knew to the fraction exactly how much they could stand. The course had already been calculated. He cleared the system, found his coordinates, then hammered the signal relays to the generator rooms. The whine of the generators rose and the needle on the acceleration master dial rose with it. Trehearne watched with bulging eyes, gasping under the pressure, barely restraining an impulse to scream. The second officer was clutching his chair, his face white.

Joris watched the dial. At the precise instant he punched the relay bars again. The needle ceased to blur in its frantic ascent, climbing now with a decent deliberation.

Joris turned around. He looked at his companions and shook with laughter. He had, for the first time since Trehearne had known him, the face of a completely happy man.

Trehearne staggered up. He got out a handkerchief and wiped his face. There was blood on it as well as sweat. "Well," he said, "we're off. But if you don't mind telling me now, Joris--where the devil are we off to?"

"H'm," said Joris. "This may seem a little peculiar to you in view of all the circumstances--"

He roared again with hearty mirth.

"I'll tell you, Trehearne. We're off to Thuvis."

SEVENTEEN

Trehearne stared at Joris. A small trickle of blood ran from his nose down over his lip. He forgot to wipe it away.

"You're joking," he said.

"Not at all." It was Edri who answered. He had come into the bridge behind Trehearne. He cried good-naturedly, "Blast you, Joris, what are you trying to do--kill us all before we get started?"

"They'll be after us soon enough," said Joris. "We need all the edge we can get."

Trehearne demanded, "Why are we going to Thuvis?"

"Partly," said Edri soberly, "to rescue the men who are rotting away out there. But chiefly because we must have Arrin. You see, Trehearne, he was arrested before he could finish his calculations. When I tried to carry on I added a good bit of my own material--but the missing factor isn't there. Arrin knows it. He must or he couldn't have gone as far as he did. Now if we put our knowledge together--" Edri sighed. "It's been a long, long fight. A thousand years of piecing together lie and legend and hearsay, of hunting down scraps of letters and secret reports, of dredging through tons of irrelevant nonsense in search of one little bit of truth. The Vardda authorities of that day suppressed or destroyed all evidence connected with that last voyage of Orthis. They did their work well. Until now no one has even known in what general sector of the Galaxy that last pursuit took place."

He brooded. "Yes, a long fight. And if we're wrong it means the end of hope in our generation. Others will have to begin the search all over again."

It seemed a cruel question to ask but Trehearne could not keep from it.

"Is there any proof that Orthis' ship still exists at all?"

"No. We only know that it was not destroyed at the time that Orthis outran his pursuers and disappeared. For as I told you, long afterward one of the life-skiffs of his ship was picked up in space, with his defiant last message to the Galaxy in it."

Edri paused, then added, "Do you wonder that we venerate such a man?"

"I think," said Trehearne slowly, "that you have his kind of courage."

"Maybe." Edri laughed. "I do know that I have a most colossal thirst. You didn't forget the wine stores, Joris?"

"The gods forbid!"

"Let's go and drink." Edri took Trehearne's arm. "And you can tell me a story--where you came from and what in hell you're doing here!"

"No," said Trehearne, without relish. "I think I'd better see about Shairn."

Edri's jaw dropped. "Shairn?"

"Yes, unfortunately--Shairn." He explained rapidly how the unwilling extra passenger had come aboard.

Edri said some low, hard words. "That isn't going to help matters one little bit. We can hardly leave her on Thuvis and we can't stop anywhere else."

"It couldn't be helped," growled Joris.

"No. Well, I think I'll go with you, Trehearne. I don't believe you'd be safe alone!"

They found her, locked in an officer's cabin for which, on this short-handed trip, there was no officer. She was still bound and gagged. From the look she gave them Trehearne thought she would have killed them both if she had the power.

He freed her. She sat up on the bunk, rubbing her wrists. Two red marks ran from the corners of her mouth across her white cheeks where the gag had rubbed. It gave her a comical expression, like the mask of a clown. There was nothing comical about her eyes.

She did not speak.

Trehearne said awkwardly, "Shairn, I'm sorry about all this. But you might as well make the best of it now you're here."

Still she did not speak. She only sat and looked at him.

Edri said, "Come on, Shairn. A glass of wine will do you good."

She ignored him. Silence and the green deadly eyes, fixed on Trehearne.

He went to her and put his hand on her shoulder. "Be reasonable, Shairn. I know how you feel but none of it was done with intent. And we're all your friends, whether you agree with us or not."

He jerked back but not quite in time. Her claws raked his cheek. He stepped away. She sat motionless and said not one word.

Trehearne swung on his heel and went out. Edri came after him and locked the door. "Perhaps Joris can talk to her," he said. His tone did not hold much hope.

"Oh, she'll come out of it," said Trehearne. "Nobody can stay that mad forever."

Edri shook his head. "I've known her longer than you have. I wouldn't count on it."

The intercom boomed over their heads--Joris calling from the bridge.

"Edri--will you and Trehearne step up here? The bad news is starting to come in."

Communications was just abaft the bridge. Joris had relinquished the controls to the Second and was standing in the cramped space behind the operator, listening intently to the thin metallic voice that came from the ultra-wave receiver.

"_Channel One--Alert. All ships in Sector M29 ... request radar confirmation on ship believed on course as follows._..."

"Port radar base would have got our coordinates at take-off, of course," said Joris. "They're just making sure."

"Listen," said Edri.

The metallic voice finished repeating the coordinates. It went on, "_All ships will identify immediately when challenged. All ships will identify._..."

"Cruisers," said Edri.

Joris frowned. "They could man at least one in a hurry. I told you we'd need a head start."

He returned to the bridge to inspect the dials and order the generators stepped up.

"We'll have to reach acceleration peak in half the normal time or we might as well have stayed on Llyrdis. I'm going to see what radar has turned up."