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In 1954 the Solar Queen series was conceived in answer to a request from one of the first Sf-Fantasy genre publishers in the field—Gnome Press. Since I was then reading manuscripts for this firm, I used for the books the pen name Andrew North. The publisher wished to develop space adventure stories which were not akin to the then steady flow of militaristic plots.
Because I had long been interested in the historical importance of the merchant adventurers of our own world in the past I plotted the ventures of the Free Traders—in my mind linking them to our earlier trader explorers and the tramp freighters of present day—having traveled on one such “tramp” myself.
I tried to create a crew of diverse backgrounds and character and plunged them into various perils which might naturally arise from their way of life. Which was done for four books—Sargasso of Space, Plague Ship, Voodoo Planet, and Postmarked the Stars,
Ms. Griffin, creator of the justly well-ranked adventure series of Star Commandos, agreed with me that the Solar Queen and her crew might well swing back into orbit— with certain new additions—namely a feminine member for the crew. Thus the Solar Queen lifts again for some more fateful voyages.
- Andre Norton
“Space Wrack! ‘Space Wreck’ would’ve been a more accurate name!”
Dane Thorson shifted his tall frame to better view the speaker, taking care not to jostle Rip Shannon, who was standing beside him. The Solar Queen’s mess had never been designed to hold the full complement of the starship’s crew at one time, and when an assembly like this was called, the twelve of them had to scramble for space. “She’s sound enough, Ali,” he told the Engineer-apprentice quietly, “and she’s paid us well up to this point.”
“Precisely, my innocent, but now that the Queen’s free of her mail contract, what in space or beyond it are we going to do with the Wrack? We won’t find many buyers out here eager to snap her up—that’s how we were able to get her in the first place—we can’t keep flying both ships with half crews indefinitely, not if we ever intend to get back into real Trade again, and we certainly can’t afford to hire enough hands to fill out the duty roster on the pair of them.”
Their Medic, Craig Tau, nodded. “All’s right about our not being able to keep on short-handed much longer. The strain’s beginning to tell even now, and we’ve had no trouble yet to push either ship. It’s time to cut, at a profit, and not wait for something real bad to happen.”
Miceal Jellico, Captain of the Solar Queen, said nothing as he listened to his crew’s discussion. His gray eyes swept the company. Seated with him at the table were the starship’s senior officers: Jan Van Rycke, easily the best CargoMaster in the ranks of the Free Traders and maybe in all Trade; the Mars-born Com-Tech Tang Ya; Steen Wilcox, the Queen’s Astrogator; Chief Engineer Johan Stotz; Tau; and Cook-Steward Frank Mura. Standing above and around them were the three apprentices—Dane, who reported to Van Rycke; Rip, who worked under Wilcox; and Ali Kamil. With them, rounding out the roster, were the huge Karl Kosti and his slight, almost bleached-pale associate, Jasper Weeks, both, like Ali, from Stotz’s department.
A good crew, the Captain thought somberly. He hoped he had not repaid their services by effectively ruining the lot of them on this one.
The gamble in buying the Space Wrack had paid off short-term. They had been able to grab the Trewsworld-Riginni run when it had opened up and had more than recouped their initial investment and expenses, but now it looked like they were not going to find disengaging from the commitment quite so simple.
Damn it to all the hells! The Solar Queen and her crew were Free Traders. They belonged in deep space, out ranging the starlanes, not perpetually hopping back and forth between two planets in the same solar system.
They did not belong on a simple mail run, either. They had been glad enough to take it in the need of the moment and had done better than might have been expected with it, but profits were small, and the work brought little satisfaction. It was time and past time for them to return to Trade as they knew it, with all its hardships and with the chimera of either fabulous fortune or sudden, maybe highly unpleasant death shimmering over every voyage. If they were forced to accept another long mail contract because they could not dispose of their sister ship, it could be the ruin of them as a crew, a team, but if the careful feelers he and Van Rycke were sending out failed to pull in a buyer, they would have no other option. Better that than be unable to meet their port fees and have to turn miners in order to keep body and soul together.
His spirits lightened abruptly when his attention shifted for a moment to the Cargo-Master. Van Rycke was not quite whistling, but there was a distinct air of triumph about him.
The big man felt his gaze and met it. His brows, whiteblond like his thinning hair, lifted. “Something on your mind, Captain?”
“Just wondering about what’s on yours. You look like you’ve just found a fistful of sunstones in a bag of salt.”
The other chuckled. “Nothing quite that dramatic, but I might be able to add a bright line or two to our catalog of prospects.”
“Spill it, then,” Jellico snapped. Far be it from him to begrudge his friend the pleasure of dazzling them all with yet another of his miracles, but when the welfare of his ship was concerned, he preferred to be kept informed . . .
Van Rycke’s eyes sparkled. “In due time. Captain.” He sobered immediately. “We have a potential buyer for the Wrack.”
“What! — Why in space . . .”
“She only contacted me a few minutes ago. I was on my way to tell you when you called assembly.”
“What’s the offer?” Miceal demanded. “And who’s the buyer?” He could not recall any likely immediate prospects. Trewsworld’s government was the most logical candidate, but the colony planet lacked the trained personnel to crew a starship, and hiring the needed people would be an expensive proposition. They were figuring on long and careful negotiations to convince the on-worlders of the eventual wisdom of such a move.
“None other than Rael Cofort, acting on behalf of her illustrious brother, of course.”
If the Cargo-Master had been looking to provoke a reaction from his comrades, he succeeded admirably. Teague Cofort had made so many incredible strikes in what was not a terribly long career that he was a legend throughout Trade. When he moved on anything, it was inevitably with purpose.
Cofort enjoyed the luxury of choice in the charters he took on or even considered, and his interest in this was confirmation of the strong base the Queen had laid down here, coming in as she had at the very opening of regular commerce between the two planets of Trewsworld and Riginni, and, indeed, in initiating it. Whatever his reasons for wanting the freighter, the opportunity of picking up the local Trade operation was likely a good part of the draw.
Ships like the Space Wrack were easily found on the starlanes he usually traveled for those with the credits to pay for them. The Trader prince had no need to come this far out on the rim hunting one. Space, he could order one new from the shipyards!
Jellico’s finger pensively rubbed the blaster scar that marred his right cheek. They would be going into the negotiations very much on the weaker side, but there would be no negotiations at all if Cofort did not need or seriously want the Wrack. He was no philanthropist and drove a good bargain for himself, but he had a reputation for dealing fairly. There was no reason to expect less of his sister. If the Queen’s representatives kept then” wits about them, they could come out of this with something to show over and above the gains they had already made.
No one spoke again for several seconds. Dane broke the silence. He had seen the famed Trader once but could not place the woman with whom they would be dealing. “I don’t recall seeing anyone with Cofort at the Survey auction. Was she there?”
Tang Ya smiled. “If she had been, put credits down that you’d remember her.”
Alt stirred. “Beautiful?”
Thorson frowned but immediately felt ashamed of his reaction. The Engineer-apprentice himself was strikingly handsome, to the extent that he almost seemed a caricature, the video stereotype of the daring star-roving hero.
Why shouldn’t comeliness in others interest him? As for the rest, Kamil was not to blame that his appearance and the poise that accompanied it occasionally annoyed Dane, and no one could fault his competence or his courage when the need to display either arose.
The Com-Tech shrugged. “Beauty is common in the universe. She has that, but there’s something unique about her, strange even. — No, she wasn’t at the auction. Rael rarely accompanies her brother when he’s conducting surplanetary business. That’s why none of you children has seen her yet.”
“She does attend gem markets now and then,” Jellico informed them. His usually cold eyes laughed as they flickered to Van Rycke. The shot was deserved payment for the surprise he had been given.
The Cargo-Master growled and then sighed. “I had the misfortune of trying to do some business on a day when the pair of them were out buying,” he informed the others. “I might as well have stayed home. Between Cofort’s store of credits and her eye, nothing—and I mean absolutely nothing—of real value remained that was anywhere near being in a Free Trader’s price range.”
“Why so many jewels?” Rip inquired curiously.
Van Rycke glanced up at his apprentice. “Answer him.”
“Teague Cofort trades with powerful people on some highly developed planets and with fairly sophisticated, complex societies even on those less technically advanced.
He has to carry quality goods, not trinkets, or no one would bother coming to him.”
“Precisely.”
Thorson breathed an inner sigh of relief. Questions and testing were every apprentice’s lot, part of the process that would eventually transform the dead material learned at Training Pool into the ingrained knowledge and experience of a Master. Still, he hated the feeling of being transported back to the classroom and hated more the chance that he might not respond correctly, embarrassing himself and letting his chief down. He realized with a touch of pride that it had been a compliment to him that the question had been put to him publicly. Van Rycke had expected an accurate reply.
“When did the Roving Star planet?” Wilcox inquired.
“She hasn’t, nor have any of the other Cofort ships,” Van Rycke told him. “Our encounter was brief, and I didn’t get a chance to question our prospective customer about that mystery. Perhaps she’ll be good enough to enlighten us when she comes aboard to discuss the Wrack.”
“Which will be when?” the Captain asked.
“In a couple of hours. I wanted to give us some thinking time.”
He sighed then, to himself. They had best use it well.
This was purely a buyer’s market. They had to unload that freighter, and Rael Cofort would know that every bit as well as they did themselves.
Miceal was too accustomed to his brown Trade uniform to be much bothered by it even with all fastenings in place and the high, stiff dress collar squeezing his neck, especially not with so important a meeting as this to claim his attention.
He studied the woman who had seated herself opposite him and Van Rycke as closely as he could without making his scrutiny too obvious. Tang had been right in calling Rael Cofort attractive, and equally correct in saying there was something unique in her appearance. It was not easy to place her in one of the major Terran sub-races or assign a planet of origin for her line. She had been space-born herself.
She was of about average height, slender, with the lithe, tightly controlled body of a veteran spacer. There was no accompanying tan, however, although her pallor was very different from Jasper Weeks’s. That skin might never darken, but it was alive with a soft warmth of its own.
Her features were delicately formed, fragile looking, making the thickly lashed- eyes appear impossibly large. They were a subtle violet color that seemed to alter with every change of thought or mood. The hair was tawny, golden like the coat of a Terran lion. She kept it long, braided and fastened in a coronet to her head in the fashion adopted by most female space hounds.
Her hands, he saw as they shuffled through the contents of the slender safe-lock portfolio she carried, were long-fingered and beautifully formed. They were also very small. One of them would not have spanned Van Rycke’s palm, or his own, for that matter.
She chose a document and held it out to them. “My authorization to act as agent for Teague Cofort of the Roving Star.”
The Cargo-Master accepted the paper and read it, as was his right in a matter of Trade. “Dated this morning?”
She nodded. “He fasmitted it when I informed him of the possible sale.”
“We hadn’t broadcast any interest in parting with the Space Wrack,” he observed.
The young woman smiled and shrugged delicately.
“When I planeted, I prowled around, asked a few questions, and came up with some deductions. Teague told me to go for it if the deal was reasonable.”
Van Rycke leaned back in his chair. “Ms. Cofort, I confess that I’m finding it a bit difficult to believe you were sent all the way to Trewsworld on the chance of finding a small freighter coming up for sale. Trade here isn’t all that spectacular, and similar chances to latch onto a ship aren’t all that uncommon even put here on the rim, much less in the inner systems you often frequent, not when there’s a good supply of credits on hand to pay for her.”
“I was not sent here, of course. I came on the Mermaid.”
“The Mermaid lifted yesterday morning.”
Her eyes flashed with the anger she otherwise chained.
“I didn’t like the way Riff Slate ran his ship.”
Van Rycke’s brows raised. “He just let you go, or hadn’t you formally signed on?”
“I’d signed. — He didn’t dare try to hold me. He doesn’t keep many hands for long.” Her lips tightened in a hard, cold line. “Most Captains economize when business is lean, but not on the life-support and emergency systems. An apprentice died during the voyage in an inconceivable outcome of an accident that should never have occurred and would not have occurred on any other vessel. To my mind, that death was nothing short of murder.”
“You can’t prove that?” Jellico asked sharply.
“No, and I wasn’t vacuum-brained enough to spread my opinion around, either. I just muttered things about jinxed voyages, and Slate let me out of my contract before I scared the rest of his crew away or into making some move that might start a formal inquiry into the number of hands the Mermaid’s shipped over the last few years. As it is, he has a lot of extremely unhappy people aboard.”
“What did you think you’d do here once you were let loose?” Van Rycke inquired.
“Stay alive. That’s a singularly appealing idea even if one has to work as a planet hugger for a time to keep eating. I knew something would eventually come along.”
Rael squared her shoulders. “If you are satisfied, perhaps we could discuss the Space Wrack instead of delving into my uninspiring history.”
The Cargo-Master made a formal bow with his head.
“What are Cofort’s terms?”
It would come down to that. Teague Cofort was merely willing to pick the ship up if he could conveniently do so. They would have to work with his terms or be prepared to reject them outright.
“We’ll give what you initially paid for her.”
“Plus ten percent for the work we put into her.”
The woman shook her head. “Our price is fair. You’ve knocked at least that much out of her, and right now she’s chaining you hands and feet. You won’t do better, and if you wait, she’ll wind up costing you besides in port expenses and maintenance.”
“We’ve been carrying those costs. We have to get them back at the least, or we don’t deal.”
“I’d say you already have. This isn’t a wildly rich charter, but it’s solid and it’s steady.”
Van Rycke leaned back in his chair, as if closing the discussion. “I’m sorry, Ms. Cofort. We have to do better than break even. If it means we have to wait a bit and take on another mail run, so be it. The Space Wrack’s a good ship, a fine one for her class. Buyers will eventually come for her.”
She eyed him thoughtfully. “I have my brother’s permission to trade for myself as well.”
Van Rycke bent forward again. “We’ll be happy to accommodate you in any way consistent with the Queen’s welfare. What do you propose?”
“The expenses you mention in return for passage to Canuche of Halio, preferably a paid working passage. I could use a few extra credits, and I don’t think you’ll be sorry for my services. You’ll be heading for there anyway,” she added practically, “so I won’t be putting you out.”
“What makes you imagine that?”
“Canuche’s the nearest planet where you’ll have a reasonable chance of picking up a decent charter as well as be able to flesh out your stock of trade goods.”
The Cargo-Master took the ID she withdrew from her portfolio. He looked sharply at her. “A Medic?”
Rael nodded. “Aye. Fully accredited.”
Her fingers reached for the disk and closed over it. “I’m aware that you don’t need an Assistant Medic aboard. No ship of the Queen’s class does, or believes she does, unless the incumbent plans to retire in the near future and wants to train in his replacement. I’m working my way as a jack-of-all-trades.”
“The Solar Queen is fully staffed,” Jellico interjected. “I’m not about to let go any of my permanent crew.”
“Hardly,” she agreed, “but tell me the department that can’t use a bit of help now and then—Mr. Van Rycke’s when cargo’s being laded or shifted, the Engineering section during preventive maintenance, even the Steward and Medic once in a while depending on the press of their particular duties. About the only place I won’t volunteer to serve is on the bridge. I’m as good as the next and probably better than most at basic astrogation, but that one is definitely best left to the experts.”
The smile she turned on them was winning. Rael was sure of getting the passage, but she was out for more than that. “I want to be part of the Solar Queen,” she told them frankly, “if only for one voyage.”
“Why?” Miceal asked bluntly. “She won’t match a Cofort ship, especially not the Roving Star, for comfort, and you can put credits down that we won’t be calling at the Federation’s most fashionable spaceports.”
The woman sighed. “You talk about our holdings as if we were a miniature Company. I assure you that is very much not the case. We have a few frills, aye, but we’re Free Traders like the rest of our kind. We don’t live soft.
“My interest in your Queen stems from two sources. First, your former Cargo-apprentice, Mara Ingrain, is the best Cargo-Master we’ve ever had. She obviously had superb training, and, happy as she is on the Star, she speaks with nothing but pride and affection of her time as part of your crew. Second is the response of your apprentices and Mr. Weeks to the crisis of being framed as a plague ship. They proved they could think quickly and clearly and then make and carry through the desperate plan needed to clear you. Furthermore, at the end, the Queen not only came out of it all solvent with a relatively good contract but managed to avenge herself on her enemies as well. I think I could learn more serving with you for a voyage or two than I could in ten years bumming around the rim.”
The violet eyes studied him somberly. “I have no ulterior motive for this. You don’t compete directly with my brother, and even if you did, Teague doesn’t deal in backalley work.”
“No one ever said that he did. Doctor Cofort,” he responded quietly.
She carefully closed her portfolio. “You have our offer. Take your time to talk it over, but please consider it well. It’s generous since we are seriously interested in acquiring the ship, and you’re not likely to better it, or equal it, either, in the foreseeable future.”
Van Rycke was silent for a moment. “That won’t be necessary. We accept your brother’s bid. — You’ll want to inspect the Wrack?”
“Of course, as will our Engineer when the crew gets here, as a formality in this case. You’ve been flying her, and none of you appears to be suicidal.— My request?”
“The Queen will carry you, but if you want to work, it’ll have to be as an unskilled temporary hand with no share in the ship’s profits.” They would have to check the rates. Only the huge transgalactics, most of those passenger liners, plying the inner-system starlanes, used unspecialized labor. Out here on the rim, no Captain could indulge in that luxury. Every crew member had his or her specific place and could usually back up at least one other shipmate as well.
“That’s all I had in mind, Mr. Van Rycke.” She glanced at Jellico. “If it is agreeable to the Captain. Hiring a crew member goes beyond a Trade agreement. I’ll have to honor his will.”
“It’s agreeable, Doctor.”
“Excellent! Thank you, Captain Jellico.”
Rael came to her feet. “I won’t be long. I’ll pick up my things and have the formal contract drawn up. You can check it over, and we can seal it when I return.”
Jan Van Rycke’s head lowered. He had done all he could, the little he could. The senior members of the crew would appreciate that, but he knew the others had expected in their hearts that he would pull off some bit of magic for them. Damn it to all the hells, he had half expected that himself. . .
Jellico looked at him. “Not bad at all,” he announced with satisfaction. “We’d already made our original cost and expenses back, so this is clear profit. As nice a pot as the Queen’s seen in many a long voyage.”
The tension melted from their comrades, and they crowded around the Cargo-Master to offer their own congratulations.
“The only question now is what we’re going to do with our new hand,” Steen remarked.
“No one has to worry about that,” Tau responded. “I can put her to very good use. I’ve been doing, or trying to do, a study of interspecies/interracial transmission of viral and bacterial infections on the planetary, interplanetary, and interstellar levels. The inputting alone is a galactic chore. If all Rael Cofort does is take over that, it’ll be worth it to me to ship her, and with a medical background she should be able to manipulate and interpret some of the data as well.”
“You do believe she’s not setting us up for anything?”
Rip pressed, voicing the nagging concern of most. They all had good reason to recall some of their recent passengers.
“As sure as we can be,” Van Rycke answered. “As Doctor Cofort pointed out, we’re not of a class to compete regularly with her brother, and we don’t even have a charter at the moment, much less anything he’d want to fight to get away from us, which he’d do openly anyway. He’s certainly not going to enter into a Trade war over an intrasystem mail run like this one. Miceal will have to confirm Rael’s credentials with him, but if she checks out there, we should be safe enough taking her aboard. It shouldn’t prove a loss to us, even apart from whatever she can do on Craig’s project. She’s at least proven she’s able to trade.”
“That she has.” The Captain shook his head, as if in amazement. “Hard as titanone, though she looks as fragile as one of Loren’s ghost lilies.”
Craig Tau chuckled. “The habitual errors of our kind! — Slight build is not the equivalent of either a weak body or incompetence in one’s field. The fair Medic was born aboard a Free Trader. The wonder would be if she could not handle herself in the business, particularly in a situation where the blaster was in her hand.”
“True enough,” Jellico agreed. He came to his feet. “I’ll start programming the navputer for Canuche. Send our recruit to my cabin when she comes aboard.”
Rael Cofort squared her shoulders and knocked briskly on the entrance panel of the Captain’s work cabin. She stepped inside a moment later upon receiving his permission to do so.
Because she knew from Mara’s descriptions what to expect, she gave no gasp of surprise, but her eyes glowed in appreciation at the sight of the montage of pictures covering all the walls, tri-dee images of some of the Federation’s rarer and more dramatic fauna. They were of the highest professional and artistic quality, and the work of which they formed a visual record had earned Miceal Jellico a respected place among the ultrasystem’s leading field xenobiologists.
There should be more in here than merely representations of strange life forms. Eagerly she sought and found the one she wanted to see. Behind the Captain’s desk, in a small, swinging cage, was one of the oddest creatures she had ever beheld, the only one of its kind she had encountered in the flesh. It looked like a lot of toad mixed with a little parrot, a bright blue feathered being with a neckless head and six legs, two of them clawed, arranged spider-fashion around its dumpy body.
“Queex!” she exclaimed in delight and quickly stepped toward the hoobat. “You’re wonderful!”
Jellico stared at her. This was not the reaction Queex usually inspired. To every previous visitor and to the rest of the Queen’s crew, his foundling was a frank horror.
He stared again, this time at the hoobat himself. Instead of his customary greeting of siren shriek followed by a distressingly accurate and far-reaching spit, the creature was gripping the wire bars of the cage with his feet and drawing his claws across the metal strands, producing a soft, droning hum, which, if not quite a violin sonata, was the first distinctly musical sound any human being had heard him produce.
Her face radiant with pleasure, Cofort reached a slender finger through the bars to gently rub the captive’s head, an attention he received with every indication of contentment.
Suddenly, as if recollecting herself to her position and purpose, the woman stepped back, flushing hotly. “I’m sorry, Sir,” she apologized. “Mara had spoken of him, and all the newstape coverage . . .”
“An interesting beast,” Jellico agreed gruffly. “You appear to get along with animals,” he added in classic understatement as he eyed the still humming hoobat.
“Aye, with nearly all subhuman-level biotics of reasonable intelligence. I like them, you see. They seem to realize that and respond to it. Plants grow well for me, too. I managed the hydro on the Roving Star and her predecessor for as long as I can remember.”
“That may prove to our advantage at some point.”
Jellico took her ID from her but did not insert it into the reader. “Your period of service will be from the present until the Queen is ready to leave Canuche of Halio, with the option to negotiate another run or a more permanent contract should either course seem desirable to both of us.”
Rael nodded. “Agreed.” She smiled. “The gem market?”
“Mr. Van Rycke would like to test your skills there, aye.”
“I’ll be glad to put them to the Queen’s service, though a certain amount of luck is always a strong component when buying jewels.”
“We recognize that fact as well, Doctor.”
The man looked thoughtfully at the disk in his hand, then glanced back up at her. “Sit down for a moment, Doctor Cofort.”
He remained silent until she had complied, then went on. “I’ve been in contact with your brother.”
“A reference check was a logical move on your part, especially after I admitted to breaching my contract with the Mermaid.” She said no more, although his silence invited further comment.
It was the Captain who continued. “Cofort reports that you’re as good a general hand as is to be found in the starlanes and that your medical qualifications are impressive.”
“However?” she prompted, readily picking up the expected reservation in his tone. Teague would not have lied for her.
“Cofort tells me that you don’t respond well to the sight of suffering or major injustice.”
The woman’s eyes brightened momentarily. “Neither does he.” She was grave again in the next instant. “It is true that I’ve drawn him into a couple of confrontations he would as soon have avoided.”
“I can’t afford to have the same thing happen to me or my crew,” Jellico told her bluntly. “A Free Trader Captain, the Captain of any starship, is responsible not only for his vessel and cargo but for every living thing she carries. He can’t always act as he would if he were an unencumbered individual. There’re always going to be times when he has no option but to look the other way. That’s true of your brother and even more so of us; we don’t pack the same payload.”
“I am aware of that fact, Captain Jellico. Too aware of it. I had to satisfy myself with leaving the Mermaid and saving my own skin instead of properly challenging Slate’s negligence.”
Her eyes dropped, and she bit down on her lip. “I hope someone does.” She looked up again, her hatred open and strong. “Soon.”
“You can count on that if the crew’s got as much reason to be dissatisfied as you said.” He slid the ID into his recorder and pushed the button, officially sealing his new hand to the ship. That done, he returned it to her. “Welcome aboard, Doctor. Thorson should be waiting outside now to show you around. You’ll have just enough time to see something of the Queen and stow your gear before we lift off.”
Dane glanced at his timer. What was keeping the woman in there anyway? His own initial interview had taken only the few seconds necessary to process his ID. . .
He glared at the door, angry with her and with himself because he recognized that his present ill will stemmed from his own uncertainty.
Damn, he thought. He knew as well as the next that mixed crews were supposedly better on every count, but the Queen had managed just fine with only men since he had joined her company, and he was not anxious to see anything intrude that might cause trouble now. They faced enough of that from the outside without introducing it into their own company.
It was no question of Rael Cofort’s probable skill or lack of it that was bothering him. Certainly, it was not her gender. There had been an abnormally low percentage of women in his class at the Pool, but they had still comprised more than a third of the total. To a one, they had proven equal to the work and had pulled their part both individually and in the group projects assigned to them.
He sighed to himself. The newcomer’s capabilities hardly interested him at the moment. He was simply afraid of what she might do. He liked the Solar Queen the way she was. He was settled, comfortable, and he did not relish the thought of any changes this potentially disruptive recruit might bring about.
Recruit! Cofort had not even been invited to join the crew. She had bludgeoned her way in with that blasted charter.
Memory rose to Thorson’s mind, and his irritation ebbed. He had not been with the Queen so long that he could not remember his fears and feelings during his own first days aboard. This woman might be older and fully accredited in her specialty, but he did not believe she would be entirely immune to at least some of the same emotions that had made his initiation such a misery for him. He would be a proper bastard if he added to her trials with a show of causeless hostility.
No, he told himself decisively, in all fairness and all humanity she would have to be given her chance, maybe several of them, but let her prove a source of trouble, let her even begin to try to destroy what they had here . . .
The panel slid open, and Rael Cofort stepped into the corridor. She gave him a quick smile. “All set,” she told him. “I’m now an official—”
A shriek as loud and teeth-jarring as a civilian attack alert silenced her. Even out here they could hear Jellico slamming the bottom of the cage, setting it bouncing violently, but for once this usually sovereign remedy had no effect. The siren wail continued undiminished.
Thorson winced. “I wonder how much of that the old man can take. Or Queex, for that matter. It’s a wonder that jostling doesn’t scramble his brains.”
The woman laughed. “Hardly! He loves it.”
“He’d have to be even odder than he looks to enjoy taking a beating.”
She looked at him strangely. “You haven’t read up on hoobats?”
“I’m afraid not. I’ve been too busy studying the finer points of cargo management,” he responded, manfully keeping out of his voice the defensive note threatening to sharpen it. Alt used to make him feel like this, sometimes still did, with his superior air. He wondered if that was a characteristic of all extraordinarily fine-looking people who were also uncommonly intelligent. “You have, I suppose?”
His companion failed to notice his discomfort. “Mara’s description intrigued me, so I did a little research. They’re rather fascinating little things. I can well understand why the Captain would want to adopt one, given his interest in X-Tee wildlife.”
“That’s more than the rest of us can say,” he remarked, his curiosity aroused almost despite himself. “How about sharing your findings?”
She laughed. “Sure thing. — Hoobats come from Tabor and are quite rare even there, filling a very specific niche. They live only in certain canyons that are little less than wind tunnels and spend their entire lives clinging to stone projections or ledges or to wildly swaying branches, waiting for something falling within the appropriate size range to come within striking or luring distance. They don’t have to eat often, and they hunt, of course, the way Queex did when he rounded up those poisonous pests for you.
“The young are nurtured in free-hanging nests depending on slender branches to safeguard them from predators. Both parents feed them during their short period of dependency, but otherwise, hoobats are completely solitary creatures. That’s why Queex can exist happily in isolation from his kind the way he does. As for the jarring, that’s actually soothing, a flashback to his old life and to his time in the nest. In fact, a hoobat appears to require a certain amount of sharp movement to remain healthy.”
Dane grinned. The image of Captain Jellico tenderly rocking an overage hoobat infant to rest was one worth cherishing in the heart if not to be openly shared—at least not in the skipper’s hearing.
“You didn’t really believe he’d consciously abuse an animal or keep one in intolerable conditions, did you?”
“No,” he replied seriously after a brief pause, “I guess I didn’t, or I wouldn’t if I’d thought about it. I have read some of Jellico’s papers, and all of them show too much liking and respect for his subjects to allow any mistreating of them.”
The man glanced at his timer. “Let’s have a quick run through of the Queen and drop off your gear. We’ll soon have to be strapping down.”
“Good idea.” She hefted her kit bag, which she had eased to the floor while they had been talking.
Thorson eyed it sourly. It was the standard size and obviously of manageable weight but was easily three times as full as his had been when he had boarded the Solar Queen.
Reason quelled his resentment. What else could he have expected? Rael Cofort was not some raw recruit out of Training Pool. She was a veteran of the starlanes who had literally been born in Trade and had hitherto lived and worked under conditions of considerable prosperity. She should have accumulated a few possessions. He, on the other hand, with no kin to back him, had come to his post with only his bare issue gear and the pathetically few extras he had been able to buy for himself to augment that.
The Cargo-apprentice first led the way through the bridge area and pointed out the personal cabins of those working there. Then they descended the core ladder to the next deck, which housed the engine and drive controls, where Johan Stotz commanded and lived with his staff.
The public cabins in which the hands and any passengers gathered during off-duty time were located below that.
Here was the mess and galley, Frank Mura’s chief domain, plus the small crew’s cabin with its media readers and other equipment designed to help dispel the boredom of interstellar travel.
Farther down, close to the holds that, with the fuel coils and drive tubes, comprised the greatest part of the Solar Queen’s interior, were the Cargo-Master’s and Thorson’s own cabins plus those of Frank Mura and Doctor Tau and the two minute chambers kept for passengers, one of which would be assigned to Cofort for the duration of her service aboard the Queen. The final cabin there was, of course, the combination sanunit/fresher that was a mandatory part of every deck containing permanent sleeping quarters.
The newcomer briefly surveyed the cabin to which her guide showed her, then dropped her pack on the foot of the bunk. The room was small even by spacer standards since it had never been intended to serve anyone as a permanent home, but it was adequate. The bunk at least was full size, and there were sufficient lockers for both clothing and bulkier belongings. A large metal panel could be unfastened and swung down and outward from the wall to provide a desk or workspace with the bunk taking the place of a chair. The lighting, she saw, was well placed and more than bright enough for reading or close work.
She did not linger to unpack but quickly went outside again to follow Thorson down to the final deck that they would be visiting. There would be no time to see much more, and she doubted that she would be invited to examine the holds for a while, although they were unsealed, empty for the most part save for a small store of trade goods. A Free Trader was usually cautious about whom he let into that treasury of his business, the storehouse of the magic he hoped to wield among the denizens of the planets he visited.
The level to which they now came was the most interesting of all to Cofort. Here was the sick bay, Doctor Tau’s surgery and laboratory, and the hydro, the large chamber housing the plants that replenished a starship’s oxygen, scrubbed the waste products of respiration from the continuously recirculated air, and supplied as a by-product fruits and vegetables to vary the otherwise monotonous diet of concentrates that was the nearly perpetual lot of space hounds who ranged the vast reaches between the stars.
The portal giving entrance to it was partly transparent, and they paused for a moment to admire the lush greenery within.
“So much!” she exclaimed. “And such variety! — I thought you were forced to flush it all out when you picked up those Sargol pests.”
“We did. Mr. Mura’s worked hard to bring it back.”
Dane took a deep breath as he opened the door, savoring as always the crisp freshness of growing things. Everywhere else, the ship’s air was stale, processed stuff. Here, it was alive.
Feeling something brush against his leg, he glanced down. A large, orange-striped tomcat had slipped in behind them and was rubbing him in the traditional greeting of his kind before turning his attention to the newcomer.
Cofort lightly lowered herself to her knees. “Hello, big boy,” she said softly as she offered him her hand to sniff.
“You’re the Chief of Pest Control, I presume?”
“He is,” Thorson confirmed. “This is Sinbad, an honored member of the crew.”
“Rightly so.” She shuddered. “I shouldn’t care to voyage far on any ship lacking a good cat.”
“You won’t find too many who’d give you an argument on that,” he agreed.
She scooped Sinbad into her arms. “He’s enormous! Ours are kittens by comparison.”
“The Roving Star has more than one cat?”
She nodded. “A senior citizen and two former foundlings who now sort of run the place under her supervision.”
Rael rubbed the big cat under the chin with the tips of fingers obviously well accustomed to that delicate work and received a rumbling purr as a reward.
Reluctantly, she put him down once more and came to her feet. She sniffed the scent-rich air appreciatively. “I’d know you had a master chef aboard even if Mara hadn’t apprised me of that fact. — Thyme, sage, basil, honey seed, sharp grass—all the old faithfuls, and I detect some real delicacies as well.”
“Detect? We’re not near the spices at all . . .”
“I’ve got sensitive senses, smell included.” Her nose wrinkled. “That’s not always an advantage on some of the holes we visit. Besides, I’ve worked in the Star’s hydro quite a bit and more or less know what to expect in a good one.”
One familiar aroma was missing. “You should have some lavender,” she told him. “There’s nothing like it for freshening the air, and it’s not overpowering even in the smallest cabin.”
Three whistles sounded over the intercom. “Lift-off coming,” Dane remarked, unnecessarily since the signal was universal to the starlanes.
They carefully sealed the hydro door after seeing Sinbad out, then scrambled up the ladder with the ease of long
[MISSING TEXT] custom to strap down Solar Queen would be would come the jump v to Canuche of Halio.
Boredom was the great plague of interstellar travel, but Rael Cofort suffered very little from that in the days that followed. Chiefly, she worked with Craig Tau, but she spent some time with every department, more or less depending upon current need and her expertise in the work at hand.
It was well after mess time but she was still at Tau’s terminal, obviously deeply involved in the task before her and quite oblivious to their presence, when the chief Medic and Jellico came into the surgery. She seemed equally unaware of the discomfort of the position she had for some unexplained reason chosen to adopt, sitting so far back that her arms had to stretch to their full length for her fingers to reach the keyboard.
The change in perspective won by another step provided the answer. A furry head and paw rested on the woman’s upper right arm. The remainder of the big cat extended down her trunk and filled her lap.
Sinbad’s eyes opened at the men’s approach. He gave a wide yawn, then leapt gracefully to the floor, where he stretched to his considerable supple length. Still purring in feline contentment, he strode off, tail high, to resume his patrol of the starship that was his universe and domain.
Cofort smiled tenderly even as she flexed her stiff arms.
“I love those little fellows so much that sometimes I think I must have been one.”
“Reincarnation?” Tau asked, curious as always about the magic and beliefs of others.
“Aye,” she responded, still smiling, “but the reference was poetic. I think we humans are granted only one voyage in which to prove ourselves. — I like to imagine that Sinbad’s kind might return more often, though, at least when and where they choose. Their life spans are so much shorter than ours that it’s nice to feel we might be reunited with a friend of our youth at a later point in our lives.”
She eyed them for a moment, as if waiting for some challenge, then flexed her shoulders again and glanced at the screen. “The fifth section’s almost in. It’s slow going, but complex enough to make the inputting fairly interesting work.”
“Exhausting work,” Jellico snapped. “You look burned down.”
The Medic studied her. “You have some Soft-Tear, I presume?”
“Of course.” The soothing drops were a widely used remedy for eyestrain throughout the Federation.
“Break off here and use it, then. This is a long-term project and won’t be finished before we reach Canuche whether we kill ourselves on it or not.”
“I know, Doctor,” she agreed ruefully. “I just find it hard to stop sometimes once my navputer’s programmed for a job like this, especially when things’re moving well.”
She came to her feet. “Mind if I see Queex first. Sir?” she asked Miceal. “I missed dropping in on him today, and ...”
“I know. I haven’t enjoyed a moment’s quiet since noon. See him by all means, and from now on you are to spend at least thirty minutes every day entertaining him. I need some peace, at least in my own quarters.”
“Thank you, Captain!”
“That was not meant as some sort of reward, Doctor Cofort,” he told her severely.
“I know. Sir, but it is all the same.”
The woman took her leave of them after that with a wave of her hand.
Jellico watched her disappear through the door. If she was tired there was no sign of it in her step, but he still fixed his comrade with a stern look. “I want to knock full value out of her, Craig, not kill her. This isn’t a slave ship.”
Tau turned to the locker where he kept his implements and more common medications. “I can’t see that one meekly submitting to abuse. — Roll up your sleeve. Captain. This won’t hurt a bit.”
“You say that every time.”
“True, when I’m giving an immunization shot. It’s medical tradition.”
He stopped talking while he prepared the laser needle, then continued. “It also seems to be tradition that no ship’s crew is ever on a nice, convenient, easily remembered schedule to receive them.”
“You could drop this one for all the good it does,” his commander grumbled. “No matter how many shots you get against Quandon Fever, a new mutation inevitably crops up, and if you’re exposed you get sick despite them all.”
“Not as sick. We hope. Besides, why make a home for the old versions? None of them’re good tenants.”
By the time Jellico felt the spark of heat from the needle,
Tau had already deactivated it. He glanced briefly at the tiny red spot it had left then rolled his sleeve back into place. “How’s your assistant doing?”
“Cofort? If I’d placed an order directly with the Spirit ruling space, I couldn’t have gotten better, at least not for this study of mine.”
“It’s more or less in her line, isn’t it? She’s an epidemiologist.”
“That title scarcely describes it. Rael Cofort knows just about every detail of every plague since premechanical Terra, and she’s very nearly as knowledgeable about mostly every other major disaster as well. She’s been even more help correlating data and interpreting it than she has been with the inputting.”
“What about practical medicine?”
The other shrugged. “Luck’s been with us, and we haven’t had to put her skills to the test.”
Craig lowered himself into the chair Rael had vacated.
“What do the others report?”
“According to Johan, she’s competent. No genius, maybe, but he can use her. Tang would put her on the screens or transceivers any time. Steen says she’s got the theory, some of it pretty obscure, but real-life calculations’re another matter. She probably could bring a ship through if pressed. He just wouldn’t care to be aboard when she tried.”
“Astrogation’s a specialized art,” the Medic observed.
“So’s surgery. None of us flyboys’d want to take a crack at that.”
“Frank’s opinion?”
“He wouldn’t need to have a blaster put to his head to make him eat her cooking, but he’d rather keep her chained to the hydro. Claims she could pull fruiting plants out of deep space.”
Tau nodded. “She seems to like dealing with living things, which is natural enough for a Medic, I suppose. At any rate, it can get results. — Trade’s people work on a grand scale. What has Van to say?”
Jellico spread his hands wide. “That she knows goods, especially luxury items, but whether she can do anything with them is anyone’s guess. Her dealings with us are no indication. We’re her own kind, and she was holding the blaster.”
That was about what Tau had expected to hear. “Strong in biotic areas, adequate with machines and math.” The common pattern. Most people leaned to one or the other.
“It’s the degree of achievement she’s attained in the areas where she’s good that sets her apart. I’d say Teague Cofort was none too pleased when she lifted off the Roving Star.”
“Credits down he wasn’t,” Miceal agreed. Even if he had been more than a little relieved to see her go.
“What about you? Have you been able to learn anything yourself?” He knew Rael had been spending a good part of what she would allow herself of free time in the Captain’s company, although there was little help she could give him on the bridge.
“Not much. She’s got a layman’s knowledge of animals, but it’s broad and detailed. She likes them, so I guess she retains whatever she reads about them. It works that way for me. At any rate, I haven’t had to talk down to her yet.”
He glowered. “Queex’ll never be the same after she goes. He looks for her to show up now. To be more precise, he demands her presence.”
“Maybe she should continue showing up,” the Medic suggested seriously.
His companion looked at him incredulously. “We know hardly anything more about that damn woman than her name!”
“Be reasonable, Miceal,” Craig said smoothly. “We could establish a precedent, a whole new rank. Hoobat-Sitter First Class ...”
Too late, Jellico saw the sparkle in his dark eyes and knew he had been taken over the jets proper. He informed the other, graphically, just where and how he should file that particular suggestion.
Both were grave again in the next moment. “She isn’t terribly communicative,” Tau agreed. “Plenty of detail on a lot of different subjects, but nothing about one Rael Cofort. Do you have some suspicions over and above that mystery?”
“Just a lot of questions with no answers forthcoming.”
“You’ve done some checking?”
He nodded briskly. “Van and I both. What we could check. Her brother’s the legend of the starlanes, not her. There’s not much information on her floating around.”
“She meshes well,” the Medic observed.
“Maybe aye, maybe no. Unless I’m misreading some of the signals, Cofort rasps on a couple of our junior members. She’s older than any of them and well out of apprenticeship, but she’s so good at so damned many things that she can come across as a threat at times.”
“Dane?”
He nodded. “He’s struggling manfully to keep any ill feeling in check, but he’s not that long out of Pool, and he wasn’t exactly the most serene recruit we’d ever shipped when he first came.”
“His experience in the Pool wasn’t one of unremitting joy. — Afraid for his job?”
“Probably not. A Medic’s not likely to be after that, but with all he’s still got to learn, he can’t view Van’s tale of her prowess in the gem market with any great pleasure.”
“Well, she can’t be upsetting Shannon. According to you, she’s no shining star at all on the bridge.”
Miceal laughed. “Hardly. Rip Shannon is so secure and easy about himself that he’s almost frightening. He also happens to like just about everyone and everything on two or more legs that anyway deserves liking.”
“Ali?” he asked. “Rael’s no danger to him, either. Machines are his game, and not hers.”
The Captain began to feel uncomfortable. “We’re pushing into your field, Craig,” he apologized.
Tau only smiled. “Pray continue. You’ve managed to stay in the right lanes so far.”
“Kamil’s a different charter from the others. — No, he knows Rael Cofort can have no influence whatsoever in his department, but I think he welcomes change, however temporary, even less willingly than Thorson does. He wants, maybe desperately needs, stability, and any alteration in personnel threatens that. He’s smart enough to recognize that there isn’t a whole lot he can do about Rael’s presence, but he still isn’t likely to embrace what he has to regard as a potential hazard with open, loving arms.”
“There’s no actual hostility,” the Medic assured him.
“I’ve been monitoring the lot of us for anything of that nature.”
“Just the potential for hostility is enough to make me very nervous,” Jellico said dryly.
The Medic’s eyes narrowed. “What is it? If you’ve got something against Rael Cofort, maybe the rest of us should know about it. I haven’t seen your instincts play us false yet.”
“Like I said, just half a galaxy of questions.”
“Why she wants a place at all on a ship like the Solar Queen being one of them?”
“It’s not exactly unreasonable to wonder. The idea of Teague Cofort’s sister bumming around the rim trying to pick up odd berths here and there does give a man pause.”
“Sure, unless she happens to be telling the truth. The Spirit of Space knows, that’s logical enough on the face of it, and she never said she’s planning to spend her life on the rim. Once she logs in some practical experience she could then rejoin her brother’s organization on her own terms or link up with some other inner-system ship. She can’t be blamed for not going for a Psycho placement. Its decision’s binding and long-term. If she’s hoping to go back to her own people in anything like the near future, she wouldn’t want to lock herself up elsewhere.
“The rim’s a reasonable place for her to come, too,” Tau went on. “She can find work here without having to worry about having her knowledge used in a Trade war against Teague since none of us deals with the same markets on any regular basis, or at least not regularly enough to form a threat.”
“So you’ve been considering some of the problems as well, I see,-for all your enthusiasm about our new hand.”
“Naturally. I’m not completely space-addled yet, I hope and pray. I’m just willing to make use of her talents while I’m wondering.”
“So am I, assuming she’s after what she claims she is. We can’t confirm that, not with almost everything we’ve got to go on coming straight from Rael Cofort herself.”
Jellico said nothing more for a moment, then he sighed.
“She’s so damned good, Craig. Why did Cofort let her go? I know. She claims she wants to try herself on her own, but Teague owns several freighters outright and has a strong interest in a number of others. Just about all his apprentices find places in his organization when they qualify. It doesn’t make sense that he couldn’t manage to come up with anything at all for his own sister.”
Miceal gave a sharp shake of his head. “What’s the matter with her? I can’t find it, but Cofort actively wanted to be rid of that woman or was at least more than willing to see the end of her.
“Even the way she fits in here’s against her. She’s trying too hard. No one not working at it full time could have the right answers, the precisely correct phrases, all the time.”
The Captain frowned. “How much of Rael Cofort are we actually seeing and how much a skillfully constructed facade?”
Miceal’s face hardened. “Right now, I wish we had turned Cofort’s damn offer down. I may well have shipped a potential nova aboard the Solar Queen—that or something half a universe worse.”
Jellico had little time to dwell on the puzzle of his unwelcome temporary hand the following day. The Queen was scheduled to set down on Canuche of Halio by late evening, and all the myriad tasks that accompanied planetfall kept him and the rest of her hands fully occupied.
Excitement ran high. The direction their immediate future would take would be decided on the rapidly nearing world.
Would they be lucky enough to pick up a charter, paying passengers or cargo that would enable them to write off the expense of their next voyage, albeit at the cost of dictating what the destination would be?
What sort of goods would they find to restock the Solar Queen’s nearly empty Trade holds? Jewels, textiles, luxury products, a vast array of manufactured items, raw materials, native produce—the planet’s markets offered them all, along with a smattering of other, more exotic goods brought in by Traders calling at the busy spaceport, but they could not predict what the exact mix or quality would be during their own stay on-world.
Soon now, they would be able to start answering those questions. In the meantime, they could only speculate and do what they could to prepare for whatever opportunities might arise—or be induced to arise—on Canuche of Halio.
A yowl and snarl like something issuing from the throat of a werebeast out of legend shocked Dane Thorson full awake.
The chill of the air told him the Queen was still on night schedule, but he did no more than note that as he cautiously made for the door panel of his cabin, feeling his way in the near-dark. He was not about to activate the lights, not until he ascertained what was wrong. Something most assuredly was. Anything out of the ordinary on a starship was to be viewed with suspicion, and a commotion in the middle of the night was the equivalent of a formal alarm, especially when she was on-world, as the Solar Queen now was.
Cautiously, he slid the panel back a crack. There was no noise now, but he froze at what he saw outside.
They had taken on a passenger, then, short a time as the hatch had been open yesterday evening. Sinbad had detected and tracked down the invader, but the challenge it presented was a real one. The beast was large, a good foot long excluding the whip-thin, hairless tail, and its low, slender body was solidly muscled. The claws on the digits of its four feet were inconsequential, obviously never intended to serve as a defense against a foe of the cat’s size.
The teeth in its long, bewhiskered muzzle were another matter. They were sharp, and the creature was fast enough to wield them efficiently. Both Sinbad’s ears were torn, and there was a deep gash on the side of his jaw.
However scored, the cat was the stronger fighter. The intruder’s brown fur was matted with blood, and it was obviously nearing the end of its strength. Sinbad recognized that. He crouched low, watching intently. Occasionally, his tail lashed with incredible, utterly controlled violence, but otherwise he was motionless, seemingly more statue than living animal.
Suddenly, with no forewarning detectable by either his prey or the watching man, Sinbad sprang. The powerful leap carried him high, then down with spine-shattering force onto the back of his opponent. Strong, needle-sharp teeth closed on the neck. Fraction-seconds later, he shook the thing and cast it on the deck, where it kicked twice in a final, nerve-fired spasm and lay still.
Dane’s eyes flicked to it, then away again. Moving quickly, he caught up Sinbad in his arms. They were no mere scratches that the cat had taken. The bleeding had to be stopped and medical care instituted at once. Immunization shots or no, the bite of an alien creature was one of the most potentially perilous accidents threatening an offworlder. No prophylactic series could defend against every one of the myriad microorganisms that might be introduced into the body by such means, many of which could overwhelm with terrifying speed and deadly result the defenses of beings not prepared by nature to confront them.
His lips compressed into a hard line. Holding the injured cat, working to stanch the bleeding that might soon dangerously weaken him, he realized that he no longer saw Sinbad simply as an animal kept aboard to perform a useful service for his human masters. This was a friend, a full member of the Solar Queen’s crew, the Chief of Pest Control in fact, as Rael Cofort had named him. Aye, there were grave limitations to the degree of communication attainable between members of his species and the feline, but Cargo-Masters and their apprentices working with precious little more on occasion when making contact with newly encountered or rarely visited races could manage to achieve lucrative trade relations beneficial to both parties . . .
When the crisis of the active bleeding was under control, Thorson hit the intercom button with a force born of anxiety. Be the victim four-footed or biped, the situation remained a medical emergency. It was his responsibility to summon expert help to deal with it.
Rael was out of her bunk and drawing on her trousers before Dane had half begun his terse description of the situation. In the next moment, she had rammed her bare feet into deck boots and thrust her aims into the sleeves of her tunic, then, grabbing the medical kit that never lay far from her hand when she slept, she dashed from her cabin.
She reached Thorson’s quarters at a full run, seconds before the senior Medic.
Her eyes sought and in the same moment found her patient. “Oh, Sinbad!” she exclaimed softly. “What’s happened to you, my brave little warrior?”
The woman set her bag down on the bottom of the bed, snapping it open as she did so. Her movements, though quick, were smooth and quiet, designed not to further startle the injured animal. “Hold him steady, Dane,” she instructed. “I want to take a quick look at those bites and then get to work on them.”
“I’ve got him,” he assured her.
Rael worked fast, with her full attention fixed on her small patient.
Dane watched in something akin to awe as her fingers seemed to fly of their own accord, at once gentle and sure in then- mission. Medicine was sometimes described as an art, and he realized he was witnessing a manifestation of that aspect of it here, a healing of body that encompassed mind and heart as well. Sinbad lay quiet in his arms, without fear, despite the excitement of the fight, his physical pain, the shock of his wounds, and the strangeness of the procedures being performed on him.
Dane glanced at Tau and caught his slow nod of approval. The Medic recognized excellence in his own profession, excellence that surpassed mere skill.
At last it was over. Cofort ran her hands several times along Sinbad’s back and sides, drawing a rumbling purr from him. She touched her lips to the top of his head, then looked up at the Cargo-apprentice. “You did well to stop the bleeding as quickly as you did. Otherwise, we might have had to transfuse him, never a pleasant experience for an animal.”
“He’ll be all right now?” Thorson inquired anxiously.
“He should be. Doctor Tau will want to look him over tomorrow ...”
“It’s rarely beneficial to the patient to change good Medics mid-treatment,” Craig interjected. “I’m available for consultation, naturally, but Sinbad’s getting excellent care from his present physician.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Tau’s comment was as much an assurance to the Queen’s crew, a public affirmation of her skill, as an acknowledgment of her right to treat as the first Medic on the scene.
Rael took the cat from Thorson. “What this poor little lad needs right now is a nice, comfortable, warm bed for the night. You won’t mind him sharing yours, will you, Dane?”
“No. Sinbad often bunks with me.” He liked the company and the feel of life-warmed fur beside him, but he sighed inwardly when the torn, as if on cue, jumped from her arms onto the bunk and settled himself, head on pillow, right in its center with almost mathematical precision.
He would not have the heart to shift his guest tonight, and if Sinbad did not move of his own accord, he would have to spend the remainder of the sleep period pretzeled around their wounded defender.
That probability was equally apparent to those of his shipmates who had pushed into his small cabin, although given the circumstances they refrained from ribbing him openly.
Rael’s eyes were still dancing with the laughter she had not yet screened when they met the Captain’s and found the same merriment mirrored there.
It lasted but an instant, then the cold solar steel returned to them. Jellico strode out into the corridor. “Let’s have a look at what’s left of his opponent.”
“A port rat,” Rip Shannon informed him, “and, space, the size of it! Sinbad got off lightly.”
The whole crew was gathered there, as was inevitable on a ship as small as the Solar Queen when an event of note occurred.
Jellico knelt beside the invader’s corpse, not touching it but studying it with an interest that overrode his innate Terran distaste for the creatures. “The beast can’t be blamed for fighting well for its life.”
Cofort smiled her approval, but her eyes were dark when they rested on the animal. “No,” she agreed. “There was no real contest, though, not once Sinbad got it cornered.”
“He was lucky all the same. It was big enough to have done even more damage than it inflicted.”
“Canuche grows them big,” she told him, “and they’re all over this town, what with the space- and seaports, the warehouse complexes serving them, and Happy City. We’ll have to put up mesh nets whenever the hatch is open if we’ve got a metal set, and even then, we’ll be fortunate not to ship a few. The Roving Star lifted with a pair the last time we were on-world. — Aggressive little beggars, too, and smart enough to duck most traps. It was the cats who finally took them for us, at the cost of some skin.”
No one received that piece of information with any sense of pleasure. If humankind had intentionally carried Terra’s felines into space, other, less desirable denizens of the mother planet had followed of their own accord. Few worlds indeed among those first settled, before the advent of the Federation’s stringent pest control regulations, had been fortunate enough to escape a visit from the tough, incredibly adaptable rat, and where that colonizing species came it generally stayed.
Oddly enough, rats had rarely wrought the ecological havoc that had marked their spread on Terra. Rather, they had concentrated their activities in and around the dwellings and other establishments of their ancient hosts and adversaries. Sometimes they grew larger than prototype, more often smaller under the pressures and differences of their new environments, but invariably they were a problem. Mostly, they were readily manageable; in a few unfortunate cases, where the rodents had either not been detected quickly enough or had myopically been ignored, they had developed into a scourge threatening the very existence of the colony itself.
“We’ll do what we can to keep them out, if only to save Sinbad another battering,” the Captain promised. “Now, dispose of this thing, Thorson, and let’s get back to our bunks for what’s left of the night. We’ll have plenty to do tomorrow besides sleeping the morning away.”
Rael wrinkled her nose in distaste as she stepped through the Queen’s hatch out onto the boarding ramp. Canuche of Halio was a highly industrialized world with a great deal of heavy manufacturing and chemical processing Every tame she came here, she found the stink of the atmosphere harder to take. Fortunately, it was only unpleasant and not actually detrimental to one’s health, however much it offended her sensibilities. Also fortunately, she had never been forced to remain very long on-world. Teague had always just stopped off to pick up a few supplies and lifted off again as quickly as he could.
“Where do we go first?” she inquired of her companions She and the three apprentices had been given the day to take care of personal business and also to get a feel for the planet. Their officers would be expecting a report from each of them on various topics relating to their respective specialties when they returned that evening.
“The supply depot,” Alt told her. “This is the first time since we took on that mail run that we’ve been near one, and we all have gear that needs replacing.”
Dane fervently seconded that statement in his own mind. When he had joined the Solar Queen, he had been fresh out of Training Pool, physically still somewhat a boy.
Since then, he had added muscle, gaining breadth of shoulder and chest. At this point, all his clothing was stretched tightly over his body and would not have gone on him at all had it not been for Frank Mura’s efforts with a needle.
He would be glad to be rid of the lot even though replacing everything would put a nasty hole in his already small store of credits.
A couple of hours later, the four left the Trade depot in good spirits. The men were wearing some of their purchases and carrying the rest. Only Rael was unburdened.
She had come on board well supplied, and she informed her companions that she was holding her spare credits for the market.
“Let’s drop off the loot,” Shannon suggested, “and see about some real, honest-to-goodness food. — You’re the expert, Rael, since none of the rest of us has been on Canuche before. Any suggestions? Someplace good in Happy City maybe?”
“Not there,” she declared flatly. “They’ve got marvelous restaurants in the northern section, right enough, but we wouldn’t want to try paying for a meal in one of those.
“This is a working person’s planet. Let’s just take a transport to any of the factory areas, preferably near the big plants down by the waterfront. We’ll find plenty of eateries around there, not fancy and the food’s plain, but it’s real, it’s good, there’s a lot of it, and it’s reasonably priced.”
“Lead on, good Doctor,” Ali told her with an exaggerated flourish of his hand. “We can always escort the children through Happy City later on and show them something of Canuche’s seamier side.”
She frowned. “That’s the locals’ playground. We’ve got no guarantee that any of its delights are safe. Trade has blacklisted the gambling altogether. Space hounds have been made the mark too often in there.”
“Do we look like total innocents?” Kamil demanded archly. “Besides, no one’s suggesting that we venture there at night. Apart from the big restaurants, most of the place’ll be shut down. It won’t hurt to have a quick look around as long as we stick together.” He said that last seriously. There were many areas in the galaxy where strangers were better advised not to wander alone, Canuche’s pleasure districts, with Happy City at the top of the list, among them. At least, rumor had it that an occasional tramp spacer had gone there for a night’s enjoyment and had not returned to ship or comrades again.
Dane soon tired of Happy City. It might sparkle with excitement at night when all its lights were ablaze and its streets and buildings were alive with people bent on finding their particular definition of fun, but now, as Ali had predicted, most of the area was closed tightly while the greater part of its denizens slept away the hours of Hallo’s light. It looked dingy and tawdry and also a little sad, like a hope just beginning to fade.
Canuche permitted bawdry, gaming, and the sale for use outside the home of the many legal intoxicants, but strictly limited the areas in which such commerce could be conducted. The result was a series of pleasure districts, one for each of the provinces into which the big planet was divided.
There was no need to conceal the nature of Happy City’s major industries, and no attempt was made to do so. Every block had one, and usually several, scarlet-fronted erotic houses with their posters of provocative symbols describing the company and substances to be found within. Interspersed among these were a bewildering number of drinking and smoking establishments, all featuring both live entertainment and gambling. Some offered facilities for dancing and food as well, the latter limited to light dishes geared to the desires of people whose main interest was in consuming products of another sort or to those wanting something to nibble while watching a show or taking a brief break from their exploration of the various haunts of the region. A few would also provide chambers where darker products could be purchased and used away from the prying eyes of the local police and the Stellar Patrol.
The remaining buildings housed straight dining places, the more pretentious of which called themselves restaurants. Those, too, were closed, and from the look of them, he was glad their guide had steered them to that eatery down by the waterfront. He doubted they would have found much of a spacer’s definition of either quantity or quality in any of these.
That would not be true once they reached the northern section, of course, with its legitimate theaters and fine restaurants, but none of those were priced to attract the patronage of apprentices from small rim Free Traders.
Thorson shook his head. The existence of the facilities around them was hardly cause for amazement. Every spaceport of any significance provided similar services, all carefully supervised for the protection of reasonably cautious spacers. The concentration of them and the sheer size of the district was something else for one accustomed from his youth to the almost ascetic standards of the Pool. Gut level, he found this wholesale dedication to raw physical amusement a little disconcerting and more so the realization that Happy City was not unique in the universe. Many planets shared the same legal attitude toward the activities pursued here, and just about every one of them sported similar areas, all more or less notorious. Where excess was expected, and encouraged, it usually occurred.
All at once, his mind snapped back from the contemplation of the cultural phenomenon of the pleasure district to fix on their immediate surroundings. He stiffened as he did so. There were few locals on the streets, but his party was drawing an uncommon amount of interest from those who were about.
To be more precise, Rael Cofort was attracting it. The time they had spent living and working together on the Solar Queen had bred a familiarity that had blunted his awareness of the Medic’s beauty. Canucheans were not so blinded, and to their way of thinking, there was but one reason why so pretty a woman should be wandering around a region like this.
The same held true for a particularly handsome man. Ali, too, was receiving some close scrutiny.
Thorson could feel his temper rising and also his concern. Sure, the four of them could defend themselves against the single or couple of individuals they encountered, but those one or two had friends, doubtless within easy call. There was precious little anyone could do against a mob except hope to outrun it.
His fear eased in the next moment. It was inevitable that they should attract attention. The fact that they were obvious strangers would in itself ensure that they were noticed.
Ali and Rael merely increased their conspicuousness. They were a singularly handsome pair by any standard that appreciated even marginally the Terran prototype, and in a place where beauty was routinely bartered, they had to expect close scrutiny.
There would be no trouble, not as long as they conducted themselves circumspectly, at least not at this hour, while Happy City was quiet and its patrons unfired by chemicals and the nighttime excitement of the place. They were, after all, off-worlders, not merely outsiders. They would not be expected to understand the nuances of appropriate behavior, much less to abide by them.
Space hounds were no more immune to that error than were their surplanetary kindred, he had to admit in all fairness. Almost to a one, they tended to regard the planet bound with precisely the same overblown, parochial tolerance. It was an odd prejudice when one considered it, and it applied almost exclusively to the various branches of humanity originating on Terra—races and species with other roots usually demanded more exacting compliance with local custom, with far heavier penalties for failure— but spacers, at least, had reason to be grateful that it existed. The attitude might in theory be a bit demeaning, but it did allow one to get on with the work at hand and conduct business effectively on planets with restrictive societies and moral or social codes strongly at variance with those ruling the starlanes.
Relaxing again, Dane turned his attention back to the silent, waiting city. They were passing one of the narrow alleys separating two outward-facing rows of buildings, and he paused a moment to study it.
The long, deeply shadowed passage was like any one of the countless others they had seen on their informal tour.
It was set exactly one step below the buildings lining it on both sides and was paved or tarred with a smooth, dark substance resistant to staining and capable of withstanding the heavy morning traffic engaged in the removal of garbage and other refuse and in the delivery of various supplies.
He noted again that each establishment seemed to possess the ability to close off its own share of the alley by means of high, retractable chain link fences, all of which were now drawn back in whole or part into their sheaths to allow the various service vehicles ready access to the entire passage. “Why the fences?” he wondered aloud. He could see no ready explanation for this apparently universal proprietary interest in these small, ugly patches of real estate.
Ali gave him one of his superior looks that still had the power to irritate the starlight out of Dane. “Well, my boy,” he pontificated, “consider the number of people, many of them total strangers, frequenting these worthy palaces of entertainment. Quite, a few of those individuals would probably like to enjoy the delights of the house and then quietly depart with their store of wealth intact. The proprietors are doubtless unsympathetic to such initiative and most likely reason that a forest of high fences will render a quick dash out the back door ineffectual.”
“Why all the chain, then?” Thorson inquired, refusing to let the other annoy him. “A solid metal barrier of this height’d be harder to scale, especially by someone who’d had a few.”
“Spare us, Ali!” Rael pleaded, laughing. “A straight reply really will do just nicely.”
The Engineer-apprentice started to scowl but then merely shrugged. “Actually, I don’t know the answer to that one,” he confessed.
“It’s so the Canuchean police and the Patrol can see at a glance what’s happening when they go by, which they do frequently and on an irregular schedule,” she informed them. “That’s why a minimum amount of lighting’s required as well. Drunks still get rolled, I’m sure, and troublesome or slow-paying patrons worked over, but this does help to keep a reasonable hatch on such practices.”
As she was speaking, Dane moved closer to the wall to study the mechanism of the fence. His companions started to join him, but Rael quickly stepped back again. “Space, what a stink!”
Ali cleared his throat. “With the volume of drinking and mixing of substances,” he said delicately, “a certain effluvium is to be expected around the back door.”
“All right, Ali,” Rip Shannon interjected. “We get the picture.”
Kamil grinned at his companion’s squeamishness but followed the others readily as they hastened to move away from the shabby yard. He had not been aware of any particularly unpleasant smell until Cofort had mentioned it, but once she did, he caught it as well, a muskiness tinged with ammonia.
The four paused when they reached the front of the establishment, a drinking bar called the Red Garnet. It was open, not merely undergoing a cleaning and set-up for the night ahead but apparently inviting trade.
“How about having a look?” Dane surprised himself with the question. The whole pleasure district repulsed him, more strongly the longer he remained in it, but he was curious, too. Damn it, he wanted to see the inside of that place or of some other like it.
The Engineer-apprentice hesitated. They were at liberty, but he had a feeling that did not include permission to patronize anything in Happy City beyond a straight restaurant. “If we go in, we’ll be expected to buy . . .”
“Not all of us,” Rael cut in sharply.
Kamil’s brows raised. “Give me time. Doctor. I was about to say that only two of us should order. The others won’t. Does that meet your approval?”
She nodded curtly. “Aye. It’s probably unnecessary, but . . .”
“Precisely, Doctor. Where Trade blacklists part of an operation, let the wise space hound beware the rest. — Now that we’ve settled on our strategy, we need only choose our two drinkers. I’ll pass. Thorson’s one since this excursion is his idea. What about you to keep him company, Cofort?”
“No thank you,” the Medic responded coolly.
“You don’t drink. Doctor?” he asked smoothly.
“Not in dives like this!”
“Shannon, then, since you don’t feel adventurous.”
Ali smiled to himself, pleased to have been able to penetrate Cofort’s armor sufficiently to get a rise out of her. No one appreciated a person’s right to create defenses more than he did, or the right to keep quiet about the reasons for doing so, but Rael Cofort’s were so good that finding a few chinks in them was a sort of a relief, as if it confirmed her basic humanity.
Dane felt sorry he had suggested coming inside as soon as he stepped through the door. The Red Garnet was just another bar where people came to do serious drinking. It was not particularly attractive, and it presented no features of special interest. Even the bustle of life and talk that would enliven the single big room later were absent now.
The set-up process was well under way, and tables were being maneuvered back into place on the freshly scrubbed floor by a half-dozen burly men. The chairs were still stacked along the walls one atop the other in groups of six.
At that point, the bartender looked up from arranging his glasses and spotted the Free Traders. “We’re open, space hounds. What’ll it be?”
“A couple of beers for the children, here,” Ali responded lightly, seeing the man’s close-set eyes begin to narrow at their apparent hesitation, “then we’ll really have to stop playing and get back to the ship, or we’ll be spending the rest of our time on-world scrubbing tubes.”
That last had been addressed to his two male comrades.
Rip recognized his move to ease potential tension and answered him appropriately, then he and Thorson stepped up to the bar to confirm the order.
They were served quickly. Shannon sipped the golden liquid. “This is good,” he averred.
The Canuchean made a sarcastic bow to acknowledge the surprised compliment. “A local brew,” he informed them. “We export a lot of it. You might mention the fact to some of your pals around the spaceport. We’d all like to see a few more off-world faces in Happy City.”
He collected their credits and went back to his previous occupation with the glasses, but the spacers could see that he did not take his small, sharp eyes off them.
Neither did any of the roustabouts, or whatever their real occupation might be. “If this were an adventure tape,” Rip whispered to the Cargo-apprentice, “we’d all be shanghaied before this scene was played out.”
“I know,” Dane responded glumly. “This wasn’t one of my better ideas.”
Shanghaied. The term had come with Terrans into space and was recognized throughout the starlanes although it was so old that its origin had long since been forgotten, Except possibly by Van Rycke. The Cargo-Master was a storehouse of odd lore.
That might not be so far from their hosts’ minds, either, he thought darkly, even if they did not quite dare to act on it. Both Cofort and Kamil were coming in for more of the same kind of study they had received on the street but far more openly and more intently. No legitimate erotic house would touch such captives with a long-range tractor, but doubtless there were a number of less scrupulous operations in the district. Maybe the wide staircase to his right led not only to the gambling rooms but to an unlicensed facility of that nature as well.
If so, and the on-worlders moved successfully, he and Rip would wind up on the bottom of the bay . . .
He glanced at Kamil. If the black-haired apprentice was worried, he gave no sign of it. Thorson did his best to imitate the engineer’s air of ease. He knew he was probably just building trouble out of nothing but his nerves, but it would be best not to reveal any unease or weakness. That in itself could provoke an incident. They were outnumbered, and it might not be easy to fight their way out of here.
Rael Cofort remained standing close beside Ali. She had quickly lost interest in the scene at the bar. She did not like the Red Garnet and wanted nothing better in that moment than to get out of the big room as quickly as possible. — Would those two never swallow their beers?
Her hand closed convulsively around her throat. She felt as if she were choking.
Her medical training kicked in when she felt the race of her pulse through the arteries. Spirit of Space, what was wrong? Her body, driven by some subconscious warning, was terrified. What was triggering this panic?
She fought to master herself but could not drive off the horrible eagerness filling her, a hunger, as if the room itself were a great maw seeking to devour them all.
Her left hand gripped her companion’s arm. “Ali, let’s get out of here. Now. Please!”
Cofort’s nerve broke with that, and she bolted for the door.
Her flight galvanized the Canucheans. They straightened and began to move in on the off-worlders.
Thorson instinctively drew closer to his remaining comrades and braced himself. Two to one. Bad odds in themselves, and a couple of their opponents had drawn knives, long, thin assassin’s blades that could readily slip between a victim’s ribs or thrust into his back to sever the spinal cord. All three Traders were unarmed . . .
Not quite, he saw suddenly. Kamil had unhooked a length of chain from his belt. Attached to one end of it was a broad double ring padded to provide a secure grip and act as a shield for the wielder’s own hand. The other ended in three wickedly curved claws.
Ali smiled coldly as he swung the chain before him with practiced ease. The on-worlders gave ground. That devilish weapon was as readily recognized in the back alleys of the ultrasystem as were their own knives, and it was a light year more feared.
Dane swallowed hard. The Engineer-apprentice had survived the Crater War and its aftermath. He never discussed those dark years, but he had just shown them one of the means by which he had managed to do it.
With Kamil acting as rear guard, the off-worlders quickly made their retreat to the street and fell back in the direction from which they had come until they reached the alley once more. Rael Cofort was waiting for them there, and the three glared furiously at her.
“Hold up,” Ali ordered. “They won’t follow us now that we’re on the street.”
“What’s to stop them?” Shannon inquired in a tight whisper.
“They’ll stay put,” he assured him. “As it stands, it’s our word against theirs. They never verbally threatened us, and both sides pulled equally illegal weapons. To cap it off, there’s a Canuchean police station halfway up the block. We raise a ruckus, and the law will swarm all over the lot of us.”
“They could call ahead, arrange to have us back-alleyed someplace.”
“Precisely why we don’t want them to see which way we went. They’ll never imagine we’d be so stupid as to linger around then- own back door.” He believed and fervently hoped.
As he spoke, Kamil casually, or seemingly casually, rehooked the deadly chain to his belt. Dane shivered in his heart. The older apprentice had worn the thing so naturally that neither of his shipmates had even noticed it, though he supposed any of the senior officers probably would have done so and confiscated it. Traders, Free or Company, went armed only in situations of open peril and only at the command of their officers, and Canuche of Halio was supposed to be a highly respectable planet.
He turned his attention to other matters, to one specific matter. His eyes fixed on the Medic.
Ali beat his comrades to challenging her. “What in all the hells did you think you were doing?” he demanded.
“Do you know what you caused in there?”
“I’m sorry,” she said in a voice so low as to be scarcely audible.
“That doesn’t quite pull it,” he told her bluntly.
Cofort’s mouth tightened. He was entitled to an explanation. All three of them were. “Something was really wrong in there. I don’t know what the danger was or how immediate it was to us, but it was all around us.” Her eyes closed.
“By all I revere, it was there . . .”
Dane spat out Van Rycke’s favorite expletive, but the Engineer-apprentice silenced him with a sharp wave of his hand. Kamil gave the woman a strange look. “If you’d told me that, Doctor,” he said, “I’d have lit my burners and gotten us out a lot sooner with a lot less trouble.”
Rip looked at him in surprise but kept out of the discussion. Whatever had sparked Cofort’s flight, she had not lied about her fear. That was still with her, or some part of it was. She appeared normal at first glance, but the pupils of her eyes were fully dilated, huge and round like those of a cat in mortal terror. Almost despite himself, he felt sorry for her.
He looked about the alley for some distraction to draw his shipmates’ attention away from her for a few moments.
“They actually do take pains to wash the place down occasionally,” he ventured in the end since he could find nothing better to say. “At least, that step nearest us and part of the surface around it have been scrubbed.”
The Medic’s hand flew to her mouth. “Spirit of Space!” she whispered. “Sweet Spirit ruling space!”
The others stared at her as if she had suddenly started a conversation with the Whisperers.
“What’s the matter now?” Thorson demanded testily.
Something definitely was. Rael’s eyes, already too large, looked enormous, and her face had drained completely of color.
“No one washes a step and three feet to one side of it. You do the whole thing, or you don’t start the job at all.”
She was trembling slightly, but she made herself peer even more closely at the place where her eyes were already riveted.
Something white seemed to be jammed into the crack where the single step met the pavement. “Look! They must’ve missed that.” Her back straightened. “We’ll need it if I’m in the right starlane.”
Dane’s eyes narrowed. Despite her terror of a moment before and her distaste for the place, Cofort obviously intended to fetch the little scrap. “Stay put. I’ll get it.” He felt like a damned fool trying to play the hero out of some ridiculous adventure tape, but Rael had been scared and probably still was, even if she was hiding it now. It would not be right to force her to go in there when he had no qualms at all about doing so.
Her fingers closed on his arm with vise-tight urgency.
“Dane, no! We’re not even armed!”
She forced the panic out of her voice. “I’m probably just being Whisperers’ bait, but it’s my idea . . .”
“What’s going on here?”
The four spacers whirled about. Absorbed as they had been, they had failed to notice the nearly silent approach of the flier now parked on the walkway behind them. Two men wearing the black and silver of the Stellar Patrol were standing beside it.
“The Patrol!” Rael exclaimed in patent relief. “Praise whatever gods rule Canuche! I’d rather have you lads take this than the locals. There’s no knowing how they stand with the owners of this place.”
The pair were unimpressed. “Just what are you four doing back here?” the agent who had challenged them, a Sergeant, demanded even more sharply.
“I believe that white object over there’s a pretty damning piece of evidence. We were going to collect it and bring it to you people before it disappeared. It’ll be gone for sure by this time tomorrow, if not a whole lot sooner.”
“Right,” he said unsympathetically. “How about telling us what sort of crime it’s supposed to betray?”
“Murder. Brutal, particularly horrible, multiple murder.”
All five men stared at the Medic. “Murder?” There was a new sharpness in the Patrol-Sergeant’s voice.
Rael shook her head. She had herself well in hand now.
With the responsibility that rested on her, she could not afford a show of panic that would weaken and in all probability annihilate her hope of convincing the necessary authorities to take her bizarre and very repugnant theory seriously. “I want to talk to your commander. This could be a big operation with some fairly important people involved.”
The agent nodded. “We’ll play it your way, space hound, but if this is some sort of joke, trust that you won’t be laughing when our old lady gets through with you.”
“Do I look particularly amused, Sergeant?”
“No,” he admitted. “That you do not. — Keil, collect our ‘evidence,’ and let’s light our burners back to headquarters.”
Dane saw Cofort stiffen and felt his own stomach tighten, but the Yeoman was back again in a matter of seconds without mishap. Once more, he felt foolish, and he shot the woman a quick, sharp look. What in space or beyond it was she thinking, and, more to the point, in what kind of stellar mess had she involved them all?
“Hats!” Patrol-Colonel Ursula Cohn’s blue-gray eyes fixed the younger woman in no friendly fashion. “That’s some tale you expect us to believe, Doctor Cofort.”
“I hope I’m wrong, Colonel, for the sake of the unknown number of men and maybe women who I think died in that wretched place,” Rael replied evenly, “but I don’t think I am. The evidence is circumstantial, but it’s there,”
“And you’re the only one who happened to spot it, just picked right up on it, a stranger to Canuche of Halio and her ways?”
“My comrades can attest to the fact that my sense of smell is very acute. I’d been near heavy concentrations of port rats before and knew the odor, but I’d never come across anything so perceptible as that at a distance in the open air. There simply wasn’t a mundane explanation to account for it. If the beasts were present in sufficient number to create a pack nest of the necessary size, they’d be all over the city, to the point that they’d represent a severe and immediate threat to human survival. Commercial starships would certainly be warned off until they could be exterminated. Since none of that was the case, I could only deduce that a vast number of rodents were being purposely kept confined close by under anything but the cleanest conditions. There’re no industries or legitimate laboratories in Happy City as far as I knew to require the creatures, nor could I imagine any experimenting on that scale. I was completely baffled.” Her mouth hardened. “Until Rip mentioned the clean-up.”
“Clean-up?”
“Your agents saw it. Nobody washes a step and a ragged patch beside it.”
“You or I wouldn’t,” the other corrected. “Navy-standard cleanliness is not a characteristic of those alleys.
Mostly, the worst mess is just scraped away to satisfy the basic sanitary code.”
“There would be more than one nasty patch, wouldn’t there, after any normal night? There weren’t any more scrubbed spots and no untouched messes that I saw, or any older residue, either. To judge by that absence and the pattern of frame stains, it looked like that whole section of the alley had been cleaned, really gone over, in odd patches at one time or another over a considerable stretch of time.”
“So you came up with a scenario to explain all the anomalies?”
The tawny-haired spacer nodded. “The motive I don’t know, but I can picture the events all too clearly. Some poor bastard meeting the criteria for a victim is gotten very drunk and maybe drugged to render him, or her, helpless or sick and is pushed or flung out back the moment the police or Patrol have made a swing by the alley. The rats are either waiting or are immediately released. They’ve obviously been accustomed to their work, and they’re great enough in number not to need much time to complete it.
After a few minutes, they’re recalled, maybe fed again as a reward to ensure their speedy return, and the few remaining scraps are swept up. There isn’t even much blood left, and the pavement doesn’t absorb the stain, at least not if it’s mopped up quickly enough.”
“Yeoman Roberts went into the place and returned without trouble,” Cohn pointed out. “Naturally, though I was terrified for him at the time. The things couldn’t be always on the loose. Besides, they have to be well fed to be kept under control and at the necessary concentration. They wouldn’t feel the need to be out foraging in the daylight.”
“It’s a bit odd that none of the neighbors has noticed anything amiss if this has been going on for some time as you suggest, isn’t it?”
Rael fixed her gaze on her tightly clasped hands. “A single incident wouldn’t take long. The thud of the victim falling probably triggers the rodents. — It can’t be the opening of the door itself since that happens all the time. — There might be a muffled scream if the poor wretch was conscious, some thrashing, maybe, but little more than that. They’d work fast.”
Her eyes glittered with a hard anger as cold as the depths of interstellar space. “However, I do agree that total longterm concealment would be impossible. Those running the swill joint across from it have to be involved and probably the staffs of the next one in from each of them as well. The third and fourth buildings on either side could be clean. They’re erotic houses. There wouldn’t be much activity out back from them, and the windows’re either painted over or shuttered. As for passersby or patrons inside, with the general clamor, a bit more just wouldn’t be noticed, or questioned if it were. It wouldn’t be loud enough or last long enough to make that much of an impression.”
“You’ve got all the answers, don’t you?” The Colonel’s face was a mask, her eyes hard, almost unblinking as they bore into the Free Trader.
“No, unfortunately. As I said before, I can’t supply the motive, though I suppose it has to be greed. The involvement of several establishments rules out psychosis or vengeance unless they’re all owned by one person. Even then, he couldn’t do it without the knowledge and active assistance of a good number of others.”
“Who are you proposing for the victims?”
Rael shook her head. “No one definite, not without knowing the why. They’re probably more or less alone, people whose presence wouldn’t really be noticed in a busy pleasure house and without friends, or powerful friends, to cause a stir about their disappearance, but the very opposite might be true, at least in one or two instances. — I just don’t know!”
The emotion she had been holding in check had momentarily gotten away from her, but the woman gripped herself again in the next instant. “That’s about it, Colonel. I’ve told you everything I can visualize that might be useful.”
A knock caused her to glance back over her shoulder.
The Patrol-Sergeant took a note from the Yeoman manning the desk outside and brought it to his commander. She glanced at it, then called out permission to enter.
Two men strode into the already crowded room. Rael’s spirit lightened at the sight of them. Miceal Jellico and Jan Van Rycke! She had no idea how they came to be here, but she felt a galaxy easier in her mind now that they were. A really good Trade Captain/Cargo-Master team was a force to be reckoned with on any level, even by the ranking officers of the rightly famed Stellar Patrol. Short as her term of service aboard the Solar Queen had been, it was long enough for her to recognize that these two were among the best in the starlanes. Their support would go a long way in bolstering her cause ... if they believed her story.
The Captain came to a stop before the Patrol commander’s desk. “Jellico of the Solar Queen,” he told her.
“This is Van Rycke, my Cargo-Master.”
“Patrol-Colonel Ursula Conn.”
Miceal gazed coolly at his junior staff. “What have these four shooting stars managed to stir up this time? Your agent informed us that you’re holding them here but that they’re not in trouble themselves.”
“They’re not unless they’ve dreamed up what they conceive to be an elaborate joke, which,” she added hastily, forestalling an outburst of the anger she saw flash in Rael’s tired eyes, “I don’t believe is the case. They may, on the other hand, be mistaken. — Doctor Cofort, please repeat what you’ve just told me. I have it all recorded., but I’d prefer to hear it live again myself.”
The Medic complied. Although she felt drained and her nerves seemed stretched beyond the snapping point, she was encouraged by that request. It meant Cohn was giving serious consideration to her theory.
She did not take nearly so long this time. There were no interruptions, and her thoughts were fully organized and consolidated.
No one spoke for a few moments after she had finished, then the Patrol-Colonel pressed her hands on her desk as if trying to shove the whole matter away from her. “It doesn’t sound any less wild on the second hearing.”
Jellico walked over to the chair where Rael was sitting and lay his hands on her shoulders. Strength seemed to flow from him, bracing her so that her shoulders straightened a little. “Whether she’s right or navigating clear off the charts,” he declared flatly, “given their nature and the logic backing them. Doctor Cofort had no moral or legal option but to report her suspicions.”
The older woman sighed. “No more than I have any option except to investigate her allegations.” The spacer’s suggestion was mad, vile, and an on-world police officer might have dismissed it outright as sheer insanity, but the Patrol had its file of atrocities; this would not even make the list of its stellar entries. Considering what misnamed humans had done to their fellows in the past—and not the terribly distant past—it had to be viewed as well within the realm of possibility.
“Then why are you holding us?” Ali demanded. He had picked that up from the Captain’s introductory comments, and he recalled too clearly the treatment they had received while under suspicion of being part of a plague ship. It did not sound at all good to him.
“You four are staying out of sight until I’ve made some preliminary arrangements. I don’t want any evidence destroyed before we can get our hands on it. If someone noticed my lads picking you up by that alley, I’d as soon let them imagine it had to do with a cargo or starship question, smuggling perhaps, and forget all about you.
Slight though the chance might be, I can’t risk having a member of a conspiracy spot you on the loose, make some sort of connection, and start protecting his fins.”
“Why bother calling the Captain if that’s the case?”
“Because the Stellar Patrol doesn’t make a practice of detaining innocent citizens incommunicado indefinitely!”
The surplanetary transceiver on her desk buzzed for her attention. The Colonel listened for a couple of minutes, then thanked the caller on the other end.
She carefully deactivated it again and turned to those crowding her office. “That was the lab,” she reported somberly. “Your evidence seems to be the real thing, Doctor Cofort.”
“Bone?”
She nodded. “Human, not long dead, and every part of it is scratched and scored, as if by the action of numerous small, very sharp teeth.”
“Not to tell you your business. Colonel,” Van Rycke said after an instant of grim silence, “but it might be advisable to pay that alley a visit real soon.”
“This very night, Mr. Van Rycke. All of us.” She nodded when his brows rose. “I’m deputizing you six. My command’s limited in number, and I’ll need the others elsewhere. — Keil, get us a leg of rambeef, a fine big one with a long length of exposed bone.”
Thorson frowned. “Will it work, Colonel Cohn? They’ve killed recently, apparently. No matter how nameless their victims, they’d still give themselves away if they did it too frequently. If the rodents are caged . . .”
“We’ll give it a try. I’m putting credits down that the fall of a relatively heavy object on or near that step is the signal that calls them. If they respond in sufficient number, we’ve got a good part of our case. If they don’t, all we’ve lost is a nice piece of meat. We’re raiding those swill joints anyway, and the erotic houses as well. If the port rats are there, we’ll find them. If we’re extremely lucky, we may pick up some documentation as well, but I’m not counting on that.”
“You’ll be able to get warrants so quickly?” Rael asked in surprise. “With so little evidence of any sort?”
“We don’t need any. Such niceties don’t apply to Happy City and its sister pleasure districts.”
She saw the spacers’ frowns and shrugged. “The Canuchean government doesn’t approve of what goes on there. The lawmakers were wise enough to realize that an attempt to bar such activities outright would only result in driving them underground and open the way for a lot more besides. By confining the questionable industries to fixed areas, they can keep control over what does occur.
“Those who work in a pleasure district can, and often do, reap large profits, but they all must sign waivers accepting unannounced and possibly frequent searches of their businesses and residences, which also must be located within the district.
“Actually, not many complain. Most stay only a few years, make their pile, and run, and the legitimate concerns do recognize that the policy helps keep some less scrupulous folk relatively honest. The sale of raklick, crax, and a half dozen other similar poisons, the abuse of minors, grossly rigged gaming, plus all the violence that goes with them would be rampant without strong, unremitting control, to the point that a large part of the current clientele would be frightened off. Needless to say, there’s always some of that going on, but it’s at least kept in check, especially with the stiff penalties handed out for engaging in any of it.”
“None of that’s really Patrol work,” Van Rycke pointed out. The interstellar force was on Canuche of Halio, one of this part of the Sector’s better-developed planets, as a check against smuggling and to provide assistance to any ships coming into difficulty in the nearby starlanes. They should not have a great deal to do with basically surplanetary affairs.
“No,” she agreed, “apart from watching for attempts to import controlled substances. The local police normally take care of Happy City, though we’re legally empowered to do so as well. We’ll prowl around in a slack period to see that visiting space hounds don’t get into or cause trouble, but that’s about the usual extent of our on-world activities. We step in when we’re asked, of course, or if we happen to spot something that looks amiss. Otherwise, we leave Canuchean business to the Canucheans.”
Halio was well set by the time the flier left headquarters.
Rael Cofort was in the backseat, jammed between Jellico and Thorson. Colonel Cohn and Yeoman Keil Roberts were in the front, the latter at the controls. Their comrades had left some minutes earlier under the Sergeant’s command, also in a civilian-type machine, to approach from a different direction. Those who would move in on the swill joints and erotic houses themselves were either already in place or would be so shortly. The spacers had seen none of them.
The others were waiting for them, concealed by the deep shadows, when the flier reached its destination a few minutes later. Their vehicle had merely dropped them off a couple of blocks back and returned to headquarters.
Keil frowned. The alley behind all four of the suspect drinking establishments was in total darkness. “We have them on lighting violations anyway,” he said in an almost soundless whisper to his commander.
Cohn nodded absently as she and her companions in the rear slipped from the flier. She could, see a little, thanks to the weak illumination provided by the erotic houses farther in. The fences were extended along the whole of the passageway, all save those that should divide the space of each of the suspect buildings from that of the others. So.
Whatever was going on here, and she could not doubt that something fairly extraordinary was, the swill joints were indeed in partnership, or at least actively cooperating with one another.
Music filled the air, blaring from every establishment, drowning out the more readily confined babble of voices.
Nothing moved out here. It was too early yet for the first loads of refuse to be dragged outside for morning pickup and far too soon for drunks to be seeking air or to unload the contents of their abused stomachs. Certainly, she could see no small, moving, furry things . . .
“All right, Mr. Thorson,” she whispered, handing him the twenty-two-pound rambeef leg she had been guarding.
“You look like you’ve got the strongest arm among our junior members, not to mention the greatest height by an inch or two. Hop up that fence and give this a good toss inside.”
“No!”
She glanced sharply at the Cargo-Master. “Mr. Van Rycke?”
“Look at that fence!”
The Patrol officer’s mouth hardened as she realized what he meant. “Thank you, Mr. Van Rycke,” she said quietly.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Thorson. I don’t know how much of a charge that thing carries, but if you had been injured or worse, the guilt would’ve been mine. — Whatever about Doctor Cofort’s theory, these sons of Scythian apes are involved in some strange business, and it’s neither clean nor small.”
She glanced at their vehicle. “Keil, bring the flier over here. He can throw it from the hood.”
“I could just fly over and drop it,” the Yeoman suggested.
“No. We’d be begging to be seen. Keep outside the fence. We’re taking enough of a chance as it is. Nothing vanishes faster than solid evidence.”
The machine’s body might be that of any civilian craft of the same general type, but its innards were all service standard. It started and moved with barely a whisper, hardly sufficient sound for them to catch although they were instinctively straining to detect the slightest noise. It would not give them away unless someone actually came or looked outside, and if that happened, they were betrayed anyway.
Jellico tensed as if for battle as Dane scrambled onto the rounded hood. The vehicle rose smoothly until it was level with the top of the wall, then hovered there. Thorson cautiously rose to his knees, his spacer’s balance holding him in place as he prepared to make his cast.
Miceal glanced at the woman beside him. Rael Cofort was standing straight and perfectly still. She seemed utterly alone in this moment of testing, and as he had done in the Patrol-Colonel’s office, he placed his hand on her shoulder, this time only one hand. The other grasped the hilt of his blaster.
He could feel the tension in her. In the next few seconds, her story might or might not be verified. That in itself was enough to draw the nerves taut, and if it did prove out, they could conceivably find themselves facing the same dire peril that had claimed the owner of that pitiful scrap of gnawed bone and an uncounted number of others before him. She had to be afraid, she who had the power to envision all this. The rest of them were.
No, he thought, he wronged the Medic in that, or wronged her in good part. He had learned something of her by that time. Rael was certain in her own mind of the accuracy of her deductions and had the imagination to appreciate very clearly the potential consequences of forcing this confrontation, but she was also thinking of the victims who had been taken in the trap they were trying to break and of those who would follow if she failed to prove her case tonight.
Dane made his throw. There was a sharp crack as the big bone protruding from the meat struck the pavement beside the step.
Jellico slowly drew his weapon. Like those of the others, it was set at broad beam to slay to provide the greatest possible defense. He glanced once more at Rael and nodded in satisfaction. She, too, had her weapon at ready in her hand.
Determination hardened in him. If the worst happened, if they found themselves facing the horde they had come to detect and could then not fight their way free, he would see to it that this woman met a clean death and then give that same grace to as many more of his companions as he could before being brought down himself. That responsibility, too, lay upon a starship Captain ...
For several interminable seconds, there was no response, then an irregular stain of deeper darkness flowed, flooded, out from the base of the building. A cluttering squeal, as if issuing simultaneously from a hundred thousand small throats, accompanied the charge. In the next moment, the bait was covered.
“Let’s have the beams,” Ursula commanded in a tone hushed as much by horror as by the need to conceal their presence.
The flier’s lights might have penetrated the Federation’s worst hell. There before them was a mouse-brown sea of writhing, struggling bodies, all snarling and fighting to reach the impossibly inadequate bounty that had summoned them.
A myriad on the outer fringes turned to face the intruders, fixing them with baleful, red-reflecting eyes, cruel fangs exposed in a desire that needed no common tongue to translate.
The outermost rodents came for the humans but stopped again as if at a wall a couple of inches from the fence. There they remained, stymied, access to the rambeef denied by the mass of their fellows, frustrated in their hunger to claim the greater feast beyond by the well-known power of the fence.
“That explains why it’s electrified,” Cohn muttered.
She brought the transceiver clutched in her left hand to her lips. “The rats are here,” she said tersely to the raiders awaiting her order. “Go on, but in the name of all we revere, be careful when you hit the cellars. These things came out of there. They may go back in, and there might be still more of them waiting down there.”
The crew of the Solar Queen crowded into the mess the following morning to hear their Captain’s summary of the report he had just received from Ursula Cohn.
“... The Patrol got everything they needed—records and live rats, four-legged and plenty of the biped variety just begging to sing in order to save their own hides, if only to spend the remainder of their days in the galactic pen.
“It was as nasty an operation as I’ve ever heard described. There’s a lot of gem mining on Canuche, apparently, mostly mid-quality amethysts and garnets with an occasional small sunstone thrown in to keep the prospectors dreaming. Everything’s minor scale, one or two guys roaming around the mineral country and leasing claims for a couple of years, then coming in with the take. No one ever gets enough to make a larger or more complex operation economically feasible, but the total is a welcome addition to the stocks of the local gem merchants, even without the odd sunstone. The stones facet nicely and can be priced low enough to be readily affordable by the bulk of the laboring people, who form a steady market for them.”
“Maybe we should keep that in mind and bring a small stock of semiprecious material back with us if we plan a return visit,” Van Rycke said half to himself. “But go on, Miceal. What do a few not particularly exciting gemstones have to do with murder by rat?”
“They can’t be eaten,” he responded grimly. The Captain marshaled his thoughts. “The prospectors fall into two general types. The most common are those who work at it for a few years, then take the money and use it to complete their education, stake a business start, or finance a trading venture or some personal dream. The rest are the perpetual drifters, not much different from their counterparts throughout the Federation, marginal folk, many of them in their middle years or older, forever talking of striking a big pocket of sunstones and retiring, in luxury but lacking any real purpose or concrete ambition. Some eventually do save a good bit, enough for them to finally leave the work comfortably fixed, but most’re content to mine their claims until their leases expire, sell off the rights, and use most of the credits to pick up another, then blow the better part of whatever remains on a week-long fling in Happy City or one of the other pleasure districts.”
“The prospectors were the targets?” Jasper Weeks inquired.
The Captain nodded. “The drifters, chiefly. The others have plans for their gains and aren’t about to spend or lose much on a binge. If they show up in Happy City at all, it’s with a very small squandering purse.
“Most of the others aren’t vacuum-brains, either. They don’t want to get back-alleyed for flashing a big roll after they’ve been sampling the local wares for a while. They make sure they’ve secured a new lease and have whatever stones or credits they want to keep banked somewhere safe before they start to party.
“There are always the few, though, who insist on a couple of drinks or a smoke at once, as soon as they get their hands on some credits, much to the joy of the unscrupulous. It goes without saying that they usually wind up voluntarily tossing away or being relieved of everything they have on them, whatever their original intentions.
“About twelve years ago, the proprietor of the Red Garnet began to cast about for ways to capitalize on that particular source of income. First off, he assigned employees to try to sniff out vulnerable prospectors at the leasing office or, failing to carry them off there, to trail them to another establishment and lure them back to the Garnet.
“The next problem was to keep them there long enough for them to hand over whatever credits they had. According to Colonel Cohn, most Canucheans want to sample the full spectrum of a pleasure district when they visit one, move from one place to another, stretch out their fun as much as possible. To counter that tendency, he brought his neighbors in on his plan. He knew he would have to do so anyway if he was going to carry it to fruition. They were already in partnership for importing and distributing controlled substances and rigging gambling, so he knew he’d have no trouble convincing or working with them. He kept full control of the operation from the start and gradually introduced its grosser aspects.
“He realized from the outset, of course, that even with gaming he had few legitimate or semi-legitimate means of getting at the stones his victims might be carrying, which in most cases form the principal part of a prospector’s hoard. It’s not permitted to accept them as payment for any goods or services in Happy City, and the police keep the district crawling with spotters to catch any violations of that rule.”
“Drunks can be back-alleyed,” Shannon pointed out.
“Only so many before the authorities begin to establish a pattern. However, if the victims can be made to vanish quickly, quietly, and completely, the operation could conceivably go on indefinitely as long as the conspirators don’t get too greedy or overconfident and move too often or without proper care.”
“Twelve years?” Dane whispered.
“Very nearly.”
“The rats?”
“They were in it almost from the start,” he averred. “The whole cellar of the Red Garnet was given over to them. They were closely caged but had free access via ramps to the alley, having been trained early to avoid the barrier of the fences. Similar guards defended the rest of the building and the other conspirators’ places. They were always well enough fed to keep them willing to remain and accept the confinement. The only times feeding was cut back were the two periods each year when leases came due and prospectors were in town in number.”
Craig was frowning. “That’s still an awful lot of people in on a very black secret. The bosses I accept, but all those underlings? For that span of time?”
“Control was no problem,” Jellico told him grimly, “not with raklick and a couple of the old opiates to tighten the leash, and if anyone seemed likely to rebel after learning a bit too much, well, the rats would have full bellies that night.
“It looks like only the four swill joints were involved, by the way. The erotic houses both appear to be clean.”
He eyed Rael somberly. “You’ll get a Patrol commendation for your part in this and maybe one from Trade as well.
Those rumors of spacers vanishing now and then in Happy City have taken on a new significance in the last several hours.” Particularly for Jan Van Rycke, he thought grimly.
An old Pool comrade of his, a loner, never very successful, had been among those thought to have disappeared in that wretched hole.
She shuddered. “I’ll be content if it’s just all over.”
“Everything but the trials and executions,” he assured her.
“One question, Rael,” Rip Shannon put in. “Would you have been so quick to go to the Patrol if those two agents hadn’t cornered us?”
The Medic looked surprised. “Naturally. I had to report my suspicions to someone. Surplanetary police are usually all right, but an off-worlder can never be sure in a situation like this. On the other hand, corruption’s almost nonexistent in the Stellar Patrol, and some of its agents know how to think. Besides,” she concluded practically, “Teague says it doesn’t hurt any ship to gain the reputation of cooperating with them, as long as she doesn’t play the fool about it, that is.”
“I wonder if you’d be speaking in such glowing terms about the folks in black and silver if you’d shared our recent experience with them,” Alt observed lazily.
“They were only doing their job! Those Company sons who framed you should’ve been sent to the Lunar mines for attempted murder, but to the Patrol, you were suspected pestilence carriers. They had no choice but to act strongly against you.”
“Very magnanimous of you,” Kamil commented with the same sleepy sarcasm, “especially when you can do your judging after the fact from a nice, safe distance.”
Rael placed her hands palm down on the table. She fixed her attention on them. “It’s true that I’ve never had to go through what you did, but I was part of the real thing.”
Her eyes rose once more to briefly meet his before dropping again. Their expression was as somber as the memories she was recalling. “I was still a child at the time. Father had planeted on a pre-mech world and was treating with the inhabitants of one of her chief trading centers when we discovered that some sort of sickness had broken out in the community, in the very section where we were operating, and was slowly but steadily gaining ominous force. We’d been on-world for several days at that point, in daily contact with the inhabitants of the infected region, and our Medic could make no more headway against the disease than could his primitive counterparts. Only one course of action was possible for us, and we took it, even as other spacers trapped in similar situations have in the past. We couldn’t risk carrying an unidentified and as yet incurable, highly contagious, deadly illness back with us into space, so we chose to stay where we were. We couldn’t even remove ourselves from the stricken city for fear of bringing the infection to uncontaminated areas of the planet.”
Her fingers whitened where they met the table. “Whatever our fears at that stage, they paled before the reality that followed. About three hundred thousand people lived and worked in that community when we arrived. Ten months later, one hundred thousand of them were dead, more than eight thousand in a single, awful week. Seven of our crew, including my father, were among them.
“So was our Medic, but he had identified the causative organism, and before he died he gave those people both a cure and a vaccine that stopped the plague as if it had hit a high security wall. The on-worlders realized what we had done for them and recognized that we had chosen both to remain and to work among them despite the proven danger to ourselves. They were grateful, and when Teague took our survivors off-world, it was with the means to buy a fine new ship outright, re-crew with top-rate hands, and fill the holds with prime trade stock.”
Her eyes suddenly locked with Kamil’s, then moved to fix each of her shipmates sitting or standing opposite her.
“That fact neither softened the horror of those ten months nor clouded the memory of it, no more than any onworlder living through that time is likely to forget it. The dying and the sickness itself were only part of it. The misery and want were everywhere, the fear, the ever-growing, crushing despair, and with all that, too much, far too much human-nastiness. I was young and a stranger, but even I was aware of rampant filth and evil.
“Never, ever, can a similar scourge be permitted to strike any planet, not while the power or the possibility of preventing it exists. That need holds true and must hold despite the danger of occasionally serving individuals or starships with the gravest injustice.”
“I don’t think any of us will argue that. Doctor,” Miceal Jellico said quietly after several seconds of grim silence. “If our lads had believed us to be plague-stricken in fact, the Solar Queen would’ve met her end in a star’s heart. Spirit of Space! Had I imagined them capable of any other course, that’s where I would’ve sent the Queen myself before I passed out.”
Rael smiled. “I know. If I’d doubted that, I’d never have come on board at all.”
Jellico shook his head as he watched the woman leave the cabin several minutes later. She would have been young, he thought, probably not much more than eleven, when she had gone through that plague. It would have been a hard experience at any age and explained both her basic gravity and her fascination with mass illness and other disaster situations.
That was no condemnation of her. Every human being reaching adulthood had his defenses and his own way of viewing the universe around him. Those who experienced massive trauma, physical or mental, and who were not shattered by it had made some pretty powerful adaptations to accommodate it, especially when it had been suffered in their vulnerable formative years. The awesome slaughter of the Crater War had shredded Ali’s childhood. Somehow, he had lived through that carnage, but it had left him one of life’s observers. He would allow nothing to penetrate the armor he had carefully constructed around himself. Rael Cofort had been somewhat older and the deadly situation in which she found herself had been of considerably shorter duration, but even so, she, too, had her facade and, her scars ...
He saw the Cargo-Master start to push out into the corridor. “Van, hold up.”
The other waited for him and fell into step beside him.
“Quite a story,” he remarked.
“Aye.”
“You believe it?” Van Rycke asked. “She never mentioned a ship’s name or a planet’s.”
“That can all be checked. The timing’d be right. Cofort appeared as a force on the scene suddenly and very young out of a spacer clan who should never under normal circumstances have been able to finance the setup he created for himself.” The rest of his history, of course, was the result of a lot of luck and even more hard work and shrewd dealing, but that early start had often been a source of speculation among the ranks of the Free Traders.
Jellico shrugged, dismissing the question for the time being. “It’s Rael herself who interests me at the moment. You and Thorson’ll be checking out the market soon. Take her with you and give her as free a hand as seems prudent. I want to see what she can do.”
“Her brother never or only rarely used her in that capacity,” Van Rycke reminded him doubtfully. “From what I saw, she’d choose the goods, but Cofort would trade for them.”
“Put it to the test anyway.”
Van gave him a curious look. “Why bother?”
He shrugged. “A xenobiologist looking for more data, maybe. Cofort’s a puzzle however you try to look at her.”
His eyes narrowed. “You and I’re both old foxes, but given all the information she had, would you have reached the same conclusion or come to it as quickly as she did?”
“Not in a star’s life span,” he admitted.
“That kind of deductive power might prove very handy to a Free Trader—if she can use it for more mundane purposes than uncovering bizarre murder plots.”
“It wouldn’t do to make a career of that,” his companion agreed dryly.
“Not unless one was straight Whisperer bait or planning to ally himself permanently with the Patrol, which would amount to the same thing.”
“You don’t believe Rael Cofort’s thinking along those lines?” the Cargo-Master asked.
“Who knows what that woman’s thinking?” he responded wearily.
Van Rycke eyed him closely. “Craig mentioned that you had some serious reservations about her.”
Jellico smiled. “I still do, but at least I think I know now why Cofort dumped her.”
Jan’s pale brows rose. “That’s more than I can claim.”
“Some perfectly capable people draw trouble. I believe Doctor Cofort is a prime example.”
“A jinx?”
Miceal gave a short laugh. “Does the Cofort operation show much sign of any such influence? — No, but Rael appears to have an overdeveloped sense of what’s right, or maybe the sight of the downtrodden just sparks a powerful protective response in her. Whatever the cause, the result can be pure headache for her Captain and shipmates, if not outright disaster.
“Look at her behavior in that alley, Van. The starlight was scared out of her, but she was all set to march in for that scrap of bone and then blast off to the Stellar Patrol at warp speed. She never gave a thought to our strained relations with that organization or a Trader’s natural instinct to navigate clear of all brass as much as possible. Add to that the fact that she’s admitted to dragging her brother into more than one scrape he’d have preferred to duck and you have the makings of a problem of no mean magnitude.”
“Why court trouble ourselves? We’ll be rid of her soon.”
“Curiosity mostly,” the other responded. “Besides, she’s tied to us until we’re ready to lift anyway. I’d like to see if she’s any good in real Trade. The Queen might as well reap some benefit if she is.”
“All right, I’ll give her a shot at the market,” the CargoMaster promised willingly enough. “Come with us yourself. She’ll know she’s under observation anyway, and it’ll be late enough now by the time we’re ready to go that some of the big industrialists might be scouting around there. I understand they usually do when a new ship comes into port, and several have this past week. We could possibly pick up a charter.”
Jellico nodded. “I’ll do that,” he said. “I’d intended waiting a bit longer before giving it a walk-through, but it won’t hurt and might help to look the place over at once.”
Ali Kamil quickened his pace until he came up beside Rael.
“I’m sorry,” he told her quietly. “I was navigating right off the charts in there.”
“So was I,” she replied’ bitterly. “Firing off my mouth like that was inexcusable. I knew what you all had been through.”
“It was no more than you had.”
He frowned and stepped aside to allow Dane and Rip to pass. Sometimes, he thought sourly, finding a place to have a private conversation aboard a starship was about as easy as netting an asteroid made of pure platinum, at least for lowly apprentices lacking the luxury of a private office or work cabin.
The Medic sensed that something more was weighing on him, but Kamil was the last person to broach it in the busy corridor. “I want to check on some seedlings,” she said.
“You could lift out the germination trays for me if you’ve got the time and don’t mind.”
“I’m happy to assist, Doctor Cofort.”
Hael breathed deeply of the rich air in the hydro. It was her favorite place here, even as the one on the Roving Star had been when she had been serving under her brother’s command. All it needed was some lavender ...
The Engineer-apprentice walked over to the tall bank of germination trays. “Which one?” he inquired.
“The top two. You’ve got enough inches on me that we won’t have to get out the ladder.”
It took only a few seconds to carefully remove the trays and set them on the nearby work bench.
He peered at the closely spaced, neat rows of minute plants, each of which bore two leaves. “What are they?” he asked curiously. “There are a couple of different kinds, I think, though it’s hard to be sure. They’re so small.”
“Most just put their heads up this morning, the others yesterday afternoon. They won’t be readily identifiable for a while yet. — One box contains tarragon, the other gray pepper. Mr. Mura wants them for the galley. He’ll be trying some new spices as well for more variety.”
“That’s always welcome.”
Both fell silent while Rael checked the moisture and nutrient content of the growth medium and examined the seedlings themselves. The time to catch trouble was early, at the first sign, before it could develop into a full-blown problem that might sweep the whole little crop.
At last she stood up. “All our infants are doing well,” she announced. “You may return them to their cradles, Mr. Kamil.”
The man complied. When he was finished, he leaned back against the bank and studied her speculatively. “How is it that you’re so good at everything. Doctor. Or so many things?” he amended. His own chief did not sing her praises the way Tau and Mura did, but then Johan Stotz rarely praised anyone. Just keeping one’s position without having one’s head verbally removed on a daily basis was compliment enough coming from him.
“I just sort of picked things up along the way. I was interested, of course, and I wanted to be of real use and not just so much inert cargo until I finally managed to officially qualify for something.”
“Ah, yes. You were raised and trained in the comforting bosom of your clan.”
“I was lucky,” she agreed seriously, “especially since I love Trade.” Her face clouded suddenly. “But, Alt, I’ve never been on my own, never once had the chance to see if I could pull it by myself. I was never even physically at Training Pool. All my classes, even my medical courses, were taped, with clinical experience gained at accredited hospitals wherever we planeted.”
The apprentice gave her a sharp look. “That’s allowed?”
“Aye, of course. The ongoing testing is stringent, with a ten percent higher grade required for passing.”
“Which I presume was never a problem.”
“No, not really. Don’t forget, I had a shipload of captive tutors all eager to help out.”
“What about the Psycho?”
“I never asked for a ship assignment since I was staying with my own clan, but classification was compulsory, of course. — Free Trader all the way.”
“Not even a shot at the Companies?” he teased.
Rael laughed. “I wouldn’t last twenty-four hours on a Company ship!”
Her expression darkened again, not pleasantly. “I didn’t manage so marvelously on the Mermaid, did I?”
“You cut your losses and ran, which was as much as anyone could have done under the circumstances.” His voice softened. She had not concealed that her failure to secure the berth cut her. “You’ll make out. You know Trade work and don’t mind doing it.”
It was a new role for Kamil, offering comfort and support. He stopped speaking for a moment, not quite knowing where else to go with it.
Unless . . . Cofort had picked up on that incredible murder plot.
“Doctor,” he said suddenly, before he could give himself a chance to back down, “can you keep your mouth shut?”
“I’m a Medic. That comes with the job. — I don’t expect you to fasmit our recent conversation to the universe at large, either, you know.”
“I won’t.” He eyed her gravely. “What do you think of Canuche of Halio?”
“I detest her,” the woman replied in complete surprise. “I like gloriously wild planets or else beautifully civilized ones with powerful conservation and anticruelty laws, all full of furry, feathered, and scaled creatures, not malodorous chemical stews.”
“Maybe there’s a galaxy more wrong with Canuche than that.”
Rael Cofort’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, Alt?” she asked quietly. She had never seen him deadly serious before, but he was now with that softly voiced suggestion.
The Engineer-apprentice did not respond for almost a full minute. “Maybe I don’t know,” he said at the end of that time. “I just don’t want to wind up in the clutches of the psychomedics as straight Whisperer bait or worse.”
“I’m no psychomedic, and I have been around the starlanes long enough to be aware of some pretty odd things, odd enough not to dismiss an unlikely-sounding theory outright.”
Kamil turned away from her. “A number of people have wondered how I managed to survive the Crater War given the fact that I’d only just started school when our community got hit.”
When she made no answer, he steeled himself and went on. “I woke up that night, a bit after midnight, terrified, in a cold-sweat panic. If I’d been older, better able to think, I’d have awakened my parents, but that would’ve ended me. I’d have been soothed, put back to bed, and been blown to bits with the rest. As it was, I simply ran. The fire ladder was outside my window. I went down it, took to my heels, and so great was my fear that I kept going until I was outside the town limits before it eased up enough to let exhaustion take over. By that time, the bombs were already falling. I was the sole survivor out of thirty thousand and some odd people.
“No one discovered that for some time to come. I was usually hungry and always cold, but I scrounged enough to get by and spent most of my time in hiding for the next couple of years. Something inside me told me to keep away from people. They’d try to help, maybe, but they’d stop me from running if I had to get out fast again.
“I did, too, twice more from air raids and twice from those butchering... When they advanced through our area and when they were being whipped back at last.
“After that, things got quieter. There were still dangers to be faced, but they weren’t on the same scale, and I’d learned to look out for those on my own. I didn’t get the same kind of warning against them.”
Alt began pacing, as if the act of movement helped him to clarify his thoughts. “When I reached puberty, something else started, and that’s continued. Whenever I come onto a site where something really bad or some enormous tragedy occurred, no matter how far back, I feel this great weight, this sorrow, settle, not on my shoulders, my body, but on my spirit, my soul as it were. I didn’t feel it in that alley—it’s got to have a bigger scope than that, I think—but I felt it where the Heaven’s Hope crashed, killing all those people. I felt it in the ruins on Limbo and in the Big Burn on Terra, though I made damn sure I kept quiet about it. Besides, we were in too much trouble of our own at the time to be worrying about the problems of the past.”
He risked a look at the Medic. She was standing spear straight, her attention fixed on him as if by compulsion.
The woman drew a deep breath. “You sense the same about Canuche?”
Kamil gave her a grim, bleak smile. “Doctor, I have to actually be on site to feel anything. Aye, I feel it now. I felt it at the moment we entered the outer atmosphere of this accursed planet. Worse, for the first time since those days in the Crater War, the panic’s back. — It’s with me all the time. Sometimes it’s all I can do not to storm the bridge and set the Queen’s controls to lift for anywhere as long as it’s not here.”
He gripped himself. “Canuche of Halio’s one big disaster, one huge tragedy. Her past reeks of it, and her future’s shadowed by more of the same. This is a true jinx world, and, Doctor Rael Cofort, there’s not a thing either of us can do about it, because no one, on-world or off, is going to believe one word I’ve said, not to the extent of taking any action to get the Solar Queen away from it. Business will be conducted as usual in the usual amount of time, and I just pray to every god in the Federation that the inevitable does not happen before we do finally lift.”
It took time to shake the chill Ali’s dark prediction had put on her, but Canuche Town’s huge outdoor market proved to be an effective antidote. Rael Cofort’s eyes were bright as she surveyed the long aisles of booths and less permanent stands and open tables filled with items being offered for sale or exchange. The capital boasted enclosed facilities as , well, of course, but those were not designed to draw small Free Traders seeking to supply themselves for a venture among the primitive planets and struggling colonies of the rim.
There was more than enough out here to meet their needs and give delight. She loved prowling around a big market, and this time she was going to be allowed to do some buying for stock, albeit under discreet but definite supervision.
She would look over the gems, certainly, she decided at once, but so much else was available that she resolved to do a quick inspection to see precisely just what was being shown. The mix of goods here had never been the same on any visit she had made to Canuche of Halio. She smiled again. Besides, it was fun to look.
Canuche was a thoroughly civilized industrial planet, and so the din, the intriguing, not always entirely pleasant odors, the basic strangeness of an alien or primitive mart were missing here, but it was an interesting place for all that.
Findings and setters were settled beside the long rows of loose gems, and next to them stood the stands of those selling finished jewelry. Fabrics and the trimmings, tools, and machines required to turn them into completed products were in another area along with clothing. Food supplies and the equipment to prepare them formed yet another section, and large industrial products, chiefly represented by salespeople supplied with illustrative samples, tapes, and literature, formed a major portion of the complex. Only the prepared food stalls broke the pattern of grouping like with like. They Were scattered throughout the huge field so that patrons would not be forced to leave their areas of interest to find refreshment.
Rael drew in and held a deep breath. The aroma of cooking was everywhere, wonderfully tempting although she had eaten only half an hour before. She wondered how Dane Thorson was responding to those beckoning fingers of scent. He could stow food as if he had cargo holds in both of his legs, and this stuff was real. That alone made even the worst of it infinitely desirable to a space hound.
“Let’s cut past the cloth booths,” she suggested since the lead had been given to her. She had no interest in the finished clothing; Van Rycke already had a full stock of such goods. The fabrics were another matter. Brocades and faux gold and silver cloth rarely failed to interest the wealthier classes and individuals among primitive buyers, and good quality, attractive material could be counted upon to attract attention and customers on most Federation planets, especially when it was blessed with the added allure of being an import. The Queen already had a good supply, but Canuche’s market had been particularly good for textiles on each of her previous visits, and they might well run across something. There were other freighters in port, and some of them might be trying to sell off part of such a cargo.
“Rael! Rael Cofort!”
The woman turned quickly. “Deke!” Her voice dropped.
“Deke Tatarcoff of the Black Hole,” she explained to her companions. “He’s been a rival and a damn good friend of Teague’s for years. Do you mind ...”
“Space, no!” Jellico told her. “A Free Trader does not ignore his friends or fail to make the acquaintance of a potential ally.” He also did not neglect an opportunity to size up potential competition.
The Solar Queen party walked over to the covered stand the other spacer had rented to display his wares.
Miceal studied the other Trader. Tatarcoff was short and stocky with a breadth of chest that bespoke some Martian ancestry. His eyes were brown, sharp and steady in their expression. His features were pleasant but well schooled; they would betray little he did not want to have read.
He was doing well, the Solar Queen’s Captain judged by the quality of his uniform and accoutrements and by the thick, three-inch-wide gold luck band circling his left wrist. Just the fact that he had rented an enclosed stall, and a large one at that, was evidence of prosperity.
“What’s Trade’s brightest star doing on Canuche?” Tatarcoff asked when they were in comfortable speaking range.
She laughed. “Put it on freeze, Deke,” she told him. “I’m on my own. The Roving Star’s not here. I’m serving with the Solar Queen. — This is Jellico, Van Rycke, and Thorson. Captain, Cargo-Master, and Cargo-apprentice respectively.”
Even as the introductions were being made, Rael was studying the Trader’s stock. It was mostly amotton, she observed, nicely woven in a variety of pastel solids and stripes well suited to the extremely light fabric.
“You folks interested?” Deke inquired. “I’ll make you a good deal.”
She shook her head. “Sorry, Deke. We’ve got all we need. This is lovely, though. It’ll move well here.”
Well and quickly, she judged. The fabric, a natural fiber from Amon, breathed like a second skin and felt as if it had no weight at all. Those were highly desirable characteristics on a world with summers as blisteringly hot as most of Canuche of Halio had to endure. These bolts were sure to catch the eye of the big garment manufacturers. In point of fact, she was more than certain that a few of their reps were even now evaluating Deke’s store from a discreet distance.
Her eyes drifted over the carefully stacked bolts at the rear of the stand. She fixed suddenly on a patch of intense blue. “Oh,” she breathed unconsciously in pure delight.
Tatarcoff looked at what had caught her attention and smiled. “Leave it to you to spot that. It’s worthy of you, too,” he added as he fetched down the examination length for her party to see. “It suits you considerably better than it probably will whoever finally takes it.”
She nodded her thanks. That was a compliment and a statement of the fabric’s value, not a sales lure. Tatarcoff knew that no Free Trader could afford the likes of this, not for personal use. Even her brother could not have justified that expense.
Rael found herself gazing down at an incredible, seemingly infinite mingling of blues and blue-violets in a shimmering field as soft as a cloud might seem to be in a dream of wonder. “Thornen silk?”
“Aye. One of my tubes gave out, and I had to planet there. I managed to pick this up in exchange for the finest sunstone I’ve ever seen come honestly on a rim market.”
There was no regret in his tone. He would make that expense good twice over when he did sell the bolt. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and if was rare.
Thorne of Brandine had given rise to a highly advanced human population independently of Terran seeding. Their planet-wide society had been pre-space when discovered and was still basically anti-mech, but it was complex, well developed, and heavily oriented toward their version of Trade. As befitted such a populace, they were ruled by a network of hereditary merchant princes owing ultimate allegiance to an official they called the Doge.
They also had very little liking for the presence of offworlders and less still for alien ways. They permitted the existence of a full spaceport to serve as a refuge for ships coming into trouble in the nearby starlanes, but they had only minimal intercourse with spacers, visitors or those running the complex. The planet was completely self-sufficient and preferred to remain so.
The rulers had a good eye for business, that notwithstanding, and they fully appreciated the value of their luxury goods, particularly their textiles. They would permit no steady trade that might grow too important, too essential to their economy, but they made occasional sales to keep Federation markets aware of their products and hungry for them. Always, they worked with individual Free Traders rather than Company ships and absolutely refused to accept any off-world agreements that would limit their choice of markets. Because their decision whether to trade among the stars or sell to their own kind was completely free and because their products were so eminently desirable, they had the power to dictate their will in the matter.
Neither Deke nor any other independent freighter Captain complained about that even if it did mean that the surplanetary merchants held a fully charged blaster in their dealings with off-worlders. Without that liberty of action, no Free Trader would ever get a crack at any of those prize cargoes. The Companies would have Thorne of Brandine locked in tighter than any space seal.
The woman sighed with regret as Tatarcoff started to fold the length again. She stole a glance at Van Rycke and saw the same hunger on him. He, too, longed to have the beautiful cloth and had no love for the reason that decreed that the Queen could not afford to sink that much capital into what was in actuality a single item, one that, given their current plans, would be singularly hard for them to place if they did acquire it.
“Good fortune with it, Deke,” she said sincerely, “though I think you’ll be sorry to see it go. I know I would be.”
“So I shall,” he admitted. “It won’t be for a while, at least. This won’t move until I planet on Hedon again. I’m not letting it go for less than it’s worth.”
Van Rycke’s brow raised. “There’re credits enough right here. Any of the major industrialists could take that bolt.”
“They could, but they won’t, not that lot. — You’ve never been on Canuche before?”
“No. The Queen’s pretty much new to this Sector apart from the Trewsworld-Riginni mail run.”
“Well, the veeps here aren’t old money or flying on school prestige and secondhand knowledge. Nearly every one of them came up through the ranks in his particular industry or via the prospector’s route. They’re capable, tough, and, since they’ve earned them the hard way, they appreciate the value of their credits. They may like luxury and its brag value as much as the next one, but reason rules, and it’d just about take a supernova on their office desks to get them to step beyond its bounds for an extravagant toy like this.”
Rael’s fingers caressed the silk. She glanced over her shoulder. The market had grown more crowded in the short time they had been at the stand, but many of the same people she had noticed earlier were still studying it. Most were laborers or the owners or representatives of small businesses looking for a length of material or a few lengths at most, but several had that air of importance every Trader comes to recognize, be it in a tribal chieftain, government official, military officer, or industrial tycoon or manager.
Those individuals had the power and means to buy and buy big. “Deke,” she asked softly, “will you trust me with this?”
“Aye,” he responded, surprised.
“Let me play with it a while.”
“Have at it.”
“How long is it?”
“Three yards.”
“Perfect.” The size of a major veil. Her plan would work if she knew anything at all of human nature.
The Medic straightened. Her rib cage arched slowly, with infinite precision, as each muscle of her body obeyed the command of her will. The motion was subtle, seemingly almost nonexistent and certainly indefinable to anyone trying to classify or describe its individual components, but the close-fitting uniform shimmered sensuously even as her bones appeared to dissolve in a rippling swaying, as if in response to the light motion of the air.
As her body followed the strange rhythm directing its movements, her fingers closed on either end of the silk panel, and in that instant, it swept, wafted, into the air.
Up it swirled, glistening in the glory of Hallo’s light, held a breath’s space on high, and swooped down again to envelop the woman as she slowly turned with it.
Again, the Thornen veil swept out. It seemed no independent thing but rather part of she who controlled it, even as together they appeared to be an exquisite extension of the light and air in which they flowed.
Miceal Jellico tore his eyes away from the apparition to study those around them. Van Rycke, too, had recalled himself to the world of the market, but the others were fully ensorcelled. Rael’s performance was so unexpected in a place like this and so perfectly executed, the material so marvelous in itself, that nearly every eye in the vicinity was riveted on her as if by the command of some irresistible compulsion.
Three times and again a fourth, the veil rose to fill the air, then with a sigh and a lowering of the head as precise and perfect as the vision preceding them, Rael closed it in upon itself and returned it to its owner.
In so doing, she released her captives. Tatarcoff recovered nearly as quickly as the Queen’s senior officers and claimed it from her with a proprietary pride. His eyes were on the several individuals making purposefully for his stand.
“I knew you’d approve, Rael,” he remarked for his potential customers’ benefit.
“It’s wonderful. I envy the one with the spirit and credits to buy it,” she responded, her voice seemingly low but in actuality pitched to reach those who were approaching.
“Fly well, Deke. I hope we’ll run into each other again before we lift.”
The Solar Queen party went some distance before Jellico gave a sharp glance at his temporary hand.
She was laughing softly but stopped and looked up at him when she felt his gaze. “I love doing that,” she explained, “and I so rarely get the chance. Teague doesn’t approve.”
“Of his dancing?”
She was not surprised the Trader Captain had recognized what she had done. “Of using it or similar techniques to enhance one’s goods. He doesn’t think it’s quite the most respectable way of doing business.”
“It was effective,” he said, “and you made no false claims. Thornen silk is beautiful. You merely . . .” He paused a moment. “You merely spun it into a dream.”
“It’s up to Tatarcoff to sell that dream,” the Cargo-Master interjected, “though he’d have to have a crater instead of a brain not to do it now. Everyone back there wants it.”
“Deke’s good,” she assured them. “He’ll move the silk and probably most or all the rest with it.”
“You moved it for him,” Dane said, forcing himself to speak naturally. He was embarrassed by the spell Cofort’s performance had cast on him. A Trader, particularly part of the Cargo department, had to be able to keep his wits on his surroundings and business.
If the others said anything, now or later, so be it, he thought. He deserved no more after that lapse. In the meantime, walking around as dumb as a lump of inert matter would do no one, especially himself, any good. He was curious about the magic Rael Cofort had wrought—and magic it had been, Trader magic rather than the kind that so intrigued Tau. Van Rycke was one of the best, and he had not seen even him use anything the like of this . . .
“No,” the Medic responded slowly. “Thomen silk itself requires no selling. Better simply doesn’t exist. That bolt is such a patent extravagance here, though, quintessential luxury beyond anything required for any conceivable occasion on a planet like Canuche of Halio, no matter how formal. It was bound to be admired, but to lift the idea of actually purchasing it out of the realm of insanity, I had to waken the hunger for beauty, the ideal of beauty, that lies buried in every normal human soul.”
“You succeeded,” Jellico said, an obvious understatement in the face of the number of determined people who had pushed in around Tatarcoffs stand even as his party had left it.
She gave him a sharp look. “There are no objections, I hope?”
“None. We’re not competing, not on this run anyway, and if the locals buy from one Free Trader, they’ll be more inclined to patronize the rest of us as well.” His eyes rested pensively on her. “You were selling more than Deke Tatarcoffs silk back there.”
“That’s part of the purpose of this excursion, isn’t it?” she countered evenly. “I’m supposed to be displaying my skill in handling the various aspects of Trade, am I not?”
“You are. You’ve shown some strange talents, Rael Cofort. I’m curious to test the extent of them.”
“Test away. Captain Jellico,” she responded lightly. “I think you won’t find me wanting, nor, perhaps, the scope of my abilities so readily fathomed as you seem to imagine, either.”