THE ZERO STONE

Copyright ©, 1968, by Andre Norton

An Ace Book, by arrangement with The Viking Press, Inc.

All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Jeff Jones.

For A. M. LIGHTNER,

who was the “Godmother” for EET

Printed in U.S.A.

ONE

The dark was so thick in this stinking alley that a man might well put out his hand and catch shadows, pull them here or there, as if they were curtain stuff. Yet I could not quarrel with the fact that this world had no moon and that only its stars spotted the nightlit sky, nor that the men of Koonga City did not set torchlights on any but the main ways of that den of disaster.

Here the acrid smells were almost as thick and strong as the dark, and under my boots the slime coating the uneven stone pavement was a further risk. While my fear urged me to run, prudence argued that I take only careful step after step, pausing to feel out the way before me. My only guide was an uncertain memory of a city I had known for only ten days, and those not dedicated to the study of geography. Somewhere ahead, if I was lucky, very, very lucky, there was a door. And on that door was set the head of a godling known to the men of this planet. In the night the eyes of that head would blaze with welcoming light, because behind the door were torches, carefully tended to burn the night through. And if a man being hunted through these streets and lanes for any reason, even fresh blood spilt before half the city for witness, could lay hand upon the latch below those blazing eyes, lift it, to enter the hall beyond, he had sanctuary from all hunters.

My outstretched fingers to the left slid along sweating stone, picking up a foul burden of stickiness as they passed. I had the laser in my right hand. It might buy me moments, a few of them, if I were cornered here, but only a few. And I was panting with the effort that had brought me so far, bewildered by the beginning of this nightmare which had certainly not been of my making, nor of Vondar’s.

Vondar - resolutely I squeezed him from my thoughts. There had been no chance for him, not from the moment the four Green Robes had walked so quietly into the taproom, set up their spin wheel (all men there going white or gray of face as they watched those quiet, assured movements), and touched the wheel into life. The deadly arrow which tipped it whirled fatefully to point out, when it came to rest, he who would be an acceptable sacrifice to the demon they so propitated.

We had sat there as if bound-which indeed we had been, in a sense, by the customs of this damnable world. Any man striving to withdraw after that arrow moved would have died, quickly, at the hands of his nearest neighbor. For there was no escape from this lottery. So we had sat there, but not in any fear, as it was not usual that an off-worlder be chosen by the Green Robes. They were not minded to have difficulty thereafter from the Patrol, or from powers beyond their own skies, being shrewd enough to know that a god may be great on his own world, and nothing under the weight of an unbeliever’s iron fist, when that fist swung down from the stars.

Vondar had even leaned forward a little, studying the faces of those about us with that curiosity of his. He was as satisfied as he ever was, having done good business that day, filled himself with as fine a dinner as these barbarians knew how to prepare, and having gained a lead to a new source of lalor crystals.

Also, had he not unmasked the tricks of Hamzar, who had tried to foist on us a lalor of six carats weight but with a heart flaw? Vondar had triangulated the gem neatly and then pointed that such damage could not be polished out, and that the crystal which might have made Hamzar’s fortune with a less expert buyer was an inferior stone in truth, worth only the price of an extra laser charge.

A laser charge- My fingers crooked tighter about my weapon. I would willingly exchange now a whole bag of lalors for another charge waiting at my belt. A man’s life is ever worth, at least to him, more than the fabled Treasure of Jaccard.

So Vondar had watched the natives in the tavern, and they had watched the spinning arrow of death. Then that arrow had wavered to a halt-pointing at no man directly, but to the narrow space which existed between Vondar’s shoulder and mine as we sat side by side. And Vondar had smiled then, saying:

“It would seem that their demon is somewhat undecided this night, Murdoc.” He spoke in Basic, but there were probably those there who understood his words. Even then he did not fear, or reach for a weapon - though I had never known Vondar to be less than alert. No man can follow the life of a gem buyer from planet to planet without having eyes all around his head, a ready laser, and a nose ever sniffing for the taint of danger.

If the demon had been undecided, his followers were not. They came for us. From the long sleeves of their robes suddenly appeared the bind cords used on prisoners they dragged to their lord’s lair. I took the first of those Green Robes, beaming across the table top, which left the wood scorched and smoking. Vondar moved, but a fraction too late. As the Free Traders say, his luck spaced, for the man to his left sprang at him, slamming him back against the wall, pinning his hand out of reach of his weapon. They were all yammering at us now, the Green Robes halting, content to let others take the risk in pulling us down.

I caught a second man reaching for Vondar. But the one already struggling with him I dared not ray, lest I get my master too. Then I heard Vondar cry out, the sound speedily smothered in a rush of blood from his lips. We had been forced apart in the struggle and now, as I slipped along the wall, trying to get beam sight on the Green Robes, my shoulders met no solid surface. I stumbled back and out, through a side door into the street.

It was then that I ran, heedlessly at first, then dodging into a deep doorway for a moment. I could hear the hunt behind me. From such hunting there was little hope of escape, for they were between me and the space port. For a long moment I huddled in that doorway, seeing no possible future beyond a fight to the end.

What fleeting scrap of memory was triggered then, I did not know. But I thought of the sanctuary past which Hamzar had taken us, three-four-days earlier. His story concerning it flashed into my mind, though at that instant I could not be sure in which direction that very thin hope of safety might lie.

I tried to push panic to the back of my mind, picture instead the street before me and how it ran in relation to the city. Training has saved many a man in such straits, and training came to my aid now. For memory had been fostered in me by stiff schooling. I was not the son and pupil of Hywel Jern for naught.

Thus and thus-I recalled the running of the streets, and thought I had some faint chance of following them. There was this, also- those who hunted me would deem they had all the advantages, that they need only keep between me and the space port and I would be easy prey, caught deep in the maze of their unfamiliar city.

I slipped from the shadow of the door and began a weaving which took me, not in the direction they would believe I would be desperately seeking, but veering from it north and west. And so I had come into this alley, slipping and scraping through its noisome muck.

My only guides were two, and to see one I had to look back to the tower of the port. Its light was strong and clear across this dark-skyed world. Keeping it ever at my right, I took it for a reverse signal. The other I could only catch glimpses of now and again as I scuttled from one shadowed space to the next. It was the watchtower of Koonga, standing tall to give warning against the sudden attacks of the barbarian sea rovers who raided down from the north in the lean seasons of the Great Cold.

The alley ended in a wall. I leaped to catch its crest, my laser held between my teeth. On the top I perched, looking about me, until I decided that the wall would now form my path. It continued to run along behind the buildings, offering none too wide a footing, but keeping me well above ground level. There were dim lights in the back windows of these upper stories, and from one to the next, they served me as beacons.

When I paused now and then to listen, I could hear the murmur of the hunters. They were spreading set from the main streets, into some of the alleys. But they did so cautiously, and I believed they did not face too happily a quarry who might be ready to loose a laser beam from the dark. Time was on their side, for with the coming of dawn, were I still away from the sanctuary, I could be readily picked out of any native gathering by my clothing alone. I wore a modified form of crew dress, suited to the seasoned space traveler, designed for ease on many different worlds, though not keeping to the uniform coloring of a crewman.

Vondar had favored a dull olive-green for our overtunics, the breast of his worked with the device of a master gemologist. Mine had the same, modified by an apprentice’s two bars. Our boots were magnet-plated for ship wear, and our under garment was of one piece, like a working crewman’s. In this world of long, fringed overrobes and twisted, colored headdresses, I would be very noticeable indeed. There was one small change I could make; I did so now, balancing precariously on my wall perch, once more holding the laser between my teeth as I loosed the seam seal and pulled off my overtunic with its bold blazoning. I rammed it into as small a ball as I could and teetered dangerously over a scrap of garden to push it into a fork of branches on a thorn bush. Then I crept along the wall top for the distance of four more houses until I came to the end at the rise of another building. From there I had a choice of leaps - down to a garden, or into the maw of another alley. I would have chosen the alley had I not frozen tight against the house wall at a sound from its depths. Something moved there, but certainly no number of men.

There was the sucking sound of a foot, or feet, lifted out of the slime, and I even thought I could hear the hiss of breathing. Whoever crept there was not moving with the openness of those who quested on my trail.

My hands had been braced against the house wall and now my fingers fell into holes there. I explored by touch and knew that I had come upon one of those geometric patterns which decorated the walls of more important buildings, some parts being intaglio and others projecting. As I felt above me, higher and higher, I began to believe that the pattern might extend clear to the roof and offer me a third way out.

Once more I crouched and this time I unsealed my boots, fastening them to the back of my belt. Then I climbed, after pausing for a long moment to listen to sounds below. They were farther away now, near the mouth of the alley.

Again my schooling came to my aid and I pulled myself up those sharply etched hand and toe holds until I swung over an ornamental parapet, past bold encrustations of demon faces set to frighten off the evil powers of natural forces.

The roof onto which I dropped sloped inward to a middle opening which gave down three floors to a center court with a core pool, into which rain water would feed during the spring storms. It was purposely smoothed to aid in that transfer of rain to reservoir, so I crept beside the parapet, my hands anchoring me from one spike of the wall to the next. But I did so with speed, for even in the dark I could see that now I was only a little away from my goal.

From this height I could see also the space port.

There were two ships there, one a passenger-cum-trader, on which that very morning Vondar had taken passage for us. It was as far from me now as if half the Dark Dragon curled between. They would know that we had bought passage on it and would keep it cordoned. The other, farther away, was a Free Trader. And, while no one normally interfered with one of those or its crew, I could make no claim on it for protection. Even if I reached sanctuary, what further hope would I have? I pushed aside that fear and turned to examine the immediate prospect of getting to the doorway. Now I would have to descend the outer face of the building into a lighted street. There were more bands of decoration and I had little doubt they would make me a ladder, if I could go unsighted. However, torches flamed in brackets along that way, and compared with the back streets through which I had fled, this was as light as a concourse on one of the inner planets.

Few men were abroad so late with legal reason. And I heard no sounds to suggest that the hunt had spread this far. They must rather be patrolling near the field. I had come this far; there was no retreat now. Giving a last searching glance below, I slipped between two of the ornaments and began the descent.

From hold to hold, feeling for those below, trusting to the strength in my fingers and wrists, I worked my way down. I had passed the top story when I came upon a window, my feet thudding home on its jutting sill. I balanced there, my hands on either side, my face to the dark interior. And then I was near startled into letting go my grasp by a shrill scream from within.

I was not conscious of making the first few drops of my continued flight down the wall. There was a second scream and a third. How soon would the household be aroused, or attention raised in the street? Finally I let go, fell in a roll. Then, not even stopping to put on my boots, I ran as I had not run before, without looking back to see what fury I had roused.

Along the house walls, sprinting from one patch of shadow to the next, I dashed. Now I could hear cries behind. At the least, the screamer had aroused members of her own household. But there came a street corner and- memory had served me right! I could sight the bright eyes of the godling on the door. I ran with open mouth, sucking in quick breaths, my boots still fastened to my belt and knocking against my hips, the laser in my hand. On and on - and always I feared to see someone step into the open between me and the face with the blazing eyes. But there was no halting and with a last burst of speed I hit against the portal, my fingers scrabbling for the ring below the head. With a jerk I pulled it. For a second or two the door, contrary to promise, seemed to resist my efforts. Then it gave, and I stumbled into a hall where stood the torches which gave light to the beacon eyes.

I had forgotten the door as I wavered on, intent only on getting inside, away from the rising clamor in the street. Then I tripped and fell forward on my knees. Somehow I squirmed around, the laser ready. Already the door was swinging shut, shutting off a scene of running men, light gleaming on the bared blades they held.

Breathing hard, I watched the door shut by itself, and then was content to sit there for a space. I had not realized how great the strain of my flight had been until this island of safety held me. It was good simply to sit on the floor of that passage and know I need not run.

Finally I roused enough to draw my boots on and look about me. Hamzar’s tale of sanctuary had not gone beyond the few facts of the face on the door and the guarantee that no malefactor could be taken from within. I had expected some type of temple to lie behind such a story. But I was not in the court of any fane now, only in a narrow hall with no doors. Very close to me stood a stone rack in which were set two oilsoaked torches, blazing steadily to form the beacon of the door eyes.

I got to my, feet and rounded that barrier, waiting for a challenge from whoever tended those night lights. With my back to their flames I saw only more corridor, unbroken, shadows at its far end which could veil anything. With some caution I advanced.

Unlike the glimpses I had had into the various other temples of Koonga, these walls were unpainted, being only the native yellow stone such as cobbled the wider streets. The same stone formed the wide blocks of the floor, and as far as I could see, the ceiling as well.

They were worn in places underfoot, as if from centuries of use. Also here and there on the floor were dark splotches following no pattern, which suggested unpleasantly that some of those who had come this way earlier might have suffered hurts during their flight, and that there had been no effort to clean away such traces.

I reached the end of the corridor and discovered it made a sharp turn to the right, one which was not visible until one reached it. To the left was only wall. That new way, being out of the path of the torches, was almost as dark as the alleys. I tried to pierce its dusk, wishing I had a beamer. Finally I turned the laser on lowest energy, sending a white pencil which scored the stained blocks of the flooring, but gave me light.

The new passage was only about four paces long. Then I was in a square box of a room and the laser beam touched upon an unlighted torch in the wall bracket. That blazed and I switched off the weapon, blinking. I might have been in a room furnished by one of the cheaper inns. Against the far wall was a basin of stone, into which trickled a small runnel of water, the overflow channeled back into the surface of the wall again.

There was a bedframe fitted with a netting of cords, a matting of dried and faintly aromatic leaves laid over it. Not a comfortable bed, but enough to keep one’s bones from aching too much. There were two stools, a small guesting table set between them. They bore none of the customary carving, but were plain, however smoothed by long use.

In the wall opposite the bed was a niche in which sat a flagon of dull metal, a small basket, and a bell. But there were no doors to the room. And I could see no other exit save the corridor along which I had come. It began to impress me that this vaunted sanctuary was close to a prison, if the trapped dare not venture forth again.

I forced the torch out of its wall hold and carried it about, searching the walls, the ceiling, the floor, to find no break. At last I wedged it back into place. The bell by the flagon next held my attention and I picked it up. A bell suggested signaling. Perhaps it would bring me an explainer- or an explanation. I rang it with as much force as I could get into a snap of the wrist. For so large a bell, it gave forth a very muted tinkle, though I tried it several times, waiting between each for an answer that did not come, until at last I slammed it back into the niche and went to sit on the bed.

When the delayed answer to my impatient summons came, it was startling enough to bring me to my feet, laser drawn. For a voice spoke out of the air seemingly only a few feet away.

“To Noskald you have come, in His Shadow abide for the waning of four torches.”

It was a moment before I realized that that voice had not used the lisping speech of Koonga, but Basic. Then they must know me for an off-worlder!

“Who are you?” My own words echoed hollowly as that voice had not. “Let me see you!”

Silence only. I spoke again, first promising awards if my plight was told at the port, or if they would give me help in reaching it. Then I threatened, speaking of ill which came when off-worlders were harmed - though I guessed that perhaps they were shrewd enough to know how hollow those threats were. There was no answer - no sign I was even heard. It could have been a recording which addressed me. And who the guardians here were I did not know either - a priesthood? Then they might be akin to the Green Robes and so would do me no favors, save those forced upon them by custom.

At last I curled into the bed and slept - and dreamed very vivid dreams which were not fancies spun by the unconscious mind, but memories out of the past. So, as it is said a dying man sometimes does, I relived much of my life, which had not been so long in years.

My beginnings were overshadowed by another - Hywel Jern who, in his time, had had a name to be reckoned with on more than one planet - and who could speak with authority in places where even the Patrol must walk with cat-soft feet, fearing to start what would take death and blood to finish.

My father had a past as murky as the shallow inlets of Hawaki after autumn storms. I do not think that any man save himself knew the whole of it; certainly we did not. For years after his death I still came across hints, bits and pieces, which each time opened another door, to show me yet another Hywel Jern. Even when I was young, at times when a coup of more than ordinary cleverness warmed whatever organ served him as a heart, he launched into a tale which was perhaps born out of his own adventuring, though he spoke always of some other man as the actor in it. Always this story was a lesson aimed at impressing upon his listeners some point of bargaining, or of action in crisis. And all his tales made more of things than of people, who were only incidental, being the owners or obtainers of objects of beauty or rarity.

Until he was close to fifty planet years old, he was prime assessor to the Veep Estampha, a sector boss of the Thieves’ Guild. My father never tried to hide this association; in fact it was a matter of pride to him. Since he seemed to have an inborn talent, which he fostered by constant study, for the valuing of unusual loot, he was a valuable man, ranking well above the general core of that illegal combine. However, he appeared to have lacked ambition to climb higher, or else he simply had an astute desire to remain alive and not a target of the ambition of others.

Then Estampha met a rootless Borer plant, which someone with ambition secreted in his private collection of exotic blooms, and came to an abrupt finish. My father withdrew prudently and at once from the resulting scramble for power. Instead he bought out of the Guild and migrated to Angkor.

For a while, I believe, he lived very quietly. But during that period he was studying both the planet and the openings for a lucrative business. It was a sparsely settled world on the pioneer level, not one which at that time attracted the attention of those with wealth, nor of the Guild. But perhaps my father had already heard rumors of what was to come.

Within a space of time he paid court to a native woman whose father operated a small hock-lock for pawning, as well as a trading post, near the only space port. Shortly after his marriage the father-in-law died of an off-world fever, a plague ship having made a crash landing before it could be warned off. The fever also decimated most of the port authorities. But Hywel Jern and his wife proved immune and carried on some of the official duties at this time, which entrenched them firmly when the plague had run its course and the government was restored.

Then, some five years later, the Vultorian star cluster was brought into cross-stellar trade by the Fortuna Combine, and Angkor suddenly came to life as a shipping port of exchange. My father’s business prospered, though he did not expand the original hock-lock.

With his many off-world contacts, both legal and illegal, he did well, but to outward appearances, only in a modest way. All spacers sooner or later lay hands on portable treasures or curiosities. To have a buyer who asked no questions and paid promptly was all they wanted at any port where the gaming tables and other planetside amusements separated them too fast from flight pay.

This quiet prosperity lasted for years, and appeared to be all my father wanted.

TWO

If Hywel Jern had contracted his marriage for reasons of convenience, it was a stable one. There were children, myself, Faskel, and Darina. My father took little interest in his daughter, but he early bent more than a little energy to the training of Faskel and me; not that Faskel showed any great promise along the lines Hywel Jern thought important.

It was the custom for us to assemble at a large table in an inner room (we lived over and behind the shop) for the evening meal. And at that time my father would bring out and pass around some item from his stock, first asking an opinion of it - its value, age, nature. Gems were a passion with him and we were forced to learn them as other children might scan book tapes for general knowledge. To my father’s satisfaction I proved an apt pupil. In time he centered most of his instruction on me, since Faskel, either because he could not, or because he stubbornly would not learn, again and again made some mistake which sent our father into one of his cold and silent withdrawals.

I never saw Hywel Jern lose his temper, but his cold displeasure was not to be courted. It was not so much that I feared such censure as that I was really fascinated and interested in what he had to teach. Before I was out of childhood I was allowed to judge the pledges in the shop. And whenever one of the gem merchants who visited my father from time to time came, I was displayed as a star pupil.

So through the years our house became one divided, my mother, Faskel, and Darina on one side, my father and I on the other. And our contact - or mine - with other children of the port was limited, my father drawing me more and more into the shop to learn his old trade of valuing. Some strange and beautiful things passed through our hands in those days. Part were sold openly, others remained in his lockboxes, to be offered in private transactions, and of those I did not see all.

There were things from alien ruins and tombs, made before the time that our species burst into space; there were pieces looted from empires which had vanished into the dust of history so long past that even their planets had been buried. And there were others new from the workshops of the inner systems, where all the creative art of a jeweler is unleashed to catch the eye of a Veep with a bottomless purse.

My father liked the old pieces the most. Sometimes he would hold a necklet, or a bracelet (which by its form had never been meant to encircle a human wrist) and speculate about who had worn it and the civilization from which it had come. And he demanded of those who brought him such trinkets as clear a history of their discovery as he could obtain, putting on tapes all he could learn.

I think that these tapes in themselves might have proven a rich treasure house for seekers of strange knowledge, and I have wondered since if Faskel ever suspected their worth and used them so. Perhaps he did, for in some ways he proved to be more shrewd than my father.

In one of our round-table meetings after an evening meal my father produced such an alien curiosity. He did not pass it from hand to hand as was his wont, but laid it on the wellpolished board of dead-black creel wood and sat staring at it as if he were one of the fakirs from the dry lands seeking to read a housewife’s future in a polished seed pod.

It was a ring, or at least it followed that form. But the band must have been made for a finger close to the size of two of ours laid together. The metal was dull, pitted, as if from great age.

Its claw setting held a stone bigger than my thumbnail, in proper proportion to the band. And it was as dull and unappealing as the metal, colorless, no sparkle or hint of life in it. Also, the longer one studied it, the more the idea grew in mind that this was the corpse of something which might have once had life and beauty but was long since dead. I had, at that first viewing, a disinclination to touch it, though I was always avid to examine these bits and pieces my father used for our instruction.

“Out of another tomb? I wish you would not bring these corpse ornaments to the table!” My mother spoke more sharply than was usual. At that time it struck me odd that she, whom I thought immune to imaginative fancies, had also so quickly associated the ring with death.

My father did not raise his eyes from the ring. Rather he spoke to Faskel in the voice he used when he would be answered, and at once.

“What make you of this?”

My brother put out his hand as if to touch the ring and then jerked it back again. “A ring - too large to wear. Maybe a temple offering.”

To that my father made no comment. Instead he said to Darina:

“And you see what?”

“It is cold- so cold-‘ My sister’s thin voice trailed off, and then she pushed away from the table. “I do not like it.”

“And you?” My father turned to me at last.

Temple offering it might have been, fashioned larger than life to fit on the finger of some god or goddess. I had seen such things pass through my father’s hands before. And some of them had had that about them which gave one a queasy feeling upon touching. But if any god had worn this- No, I did not believe it had been made for such a purpose. Darina was also right. It evoked a sensation of cold, as well as of death. However, the more I studied it, the more it fascinated me. I wanted to touch, yet I feared. And it seemed to me that my feeling reflected something about the ring which made it more than any other gem I had seen, though it was now but age-pitted metal set with a lifeless stone.

“I do not know - save that it is - or was - a thing of power!” And my certainty of that fact was such that I spoke more loudly than I had meant to, so my final word rang through the room.

“Where did it come from?” Faskel asked quickly, hunching forward again and putting out his hand as if to lay it over ring and stone, though his fingers only hovered above it. In that moment I had the thought that he who did take it firmly would be following the custom of gem dealers: to close hand about a jewel was to accept an offered bargain. But if that were so, Faskel did not quite dare to accept such ‘a challenge, for he drew back his hand a second time.

“From space,” my father returned.

There are gems out of space - primitive peoples pay high sums to own them. What forms them we are not quite sure even yet. The accepted theory is that they are produced when bits of meteor of the proper metallic composition pass through the blaze of a planet’s atmosphere. It was the fad for a while to make space Captains’ rings out of these tektites. I have seen several such, centuries old, which must have been worn by the first space venturers. But this gem, if gem it really was, bore no resemblance to those, for it was not dark green, black, or brown, but a colorless crystal, dulled as if sand had pitted the surface deeply.

“It does not look like a tektite- I ventured.

My father shook his head. “It was not formed in space, not that I know of - it was found there.” He leaned back in his chair and took up his cup of folgar tea, sipping absent-mindedly as he continued to stare at the ring. “A curious tale-“

“We expect Councilor Sands and his lady-“ my mother interrupted abruptly, as if she knew the tale and wanted not to hear it again. “The hour grows late.” She started to gather our cups, then raised her hands to clap for Staffla, our serving maid.

“A curious tale,” my father repeated as if he had not heard her at all. And such was his hold over his household that she did not summon Staffla, but sat, moving a little uneasily, plainly unhappy.

“But a true one - of that I am sure,” my father continued. “This was brought in today by the first officer of the Astra. They had a grid failure in mid-passage and had to come out of hyper for repairs. Their luck continued bad, for they had a holing from a meteor pebble. It was necessary then to patch the hull as well.” He was telling this badly, not as he usually spun such stories, but more as one who would keep strictly to facts, and those were meager. “Kjor was doing the patch job when he saw it- a floater - He beamed out on his stay line and brought it in - a body in a suit. Not”- my father hesitated- “of any species he knew. And it had been there a long time. It wore this over its suit glove.” He pointed to the ring.

Over the glove of a space suit-the strangeness of that indeed made one wonder. The gloves are supple enough; they have to be if a man wears them in outer space for ship repair, or while exploring a planet deadly to his species. But why would anyone want to wear     an ornament over such a glove? I must have asked that aloud for my father answered:

“Why indeed? Certainly not for any reason of show. Therefore - this had importance, vast importance to him who wore it. Enough that I would like to know it better.”

“There are tests,” Faskel observed.

“This is a gem stone, unknown to me, and twelve on the Mobs scale-“

“A diamond is ten-“

“And a Javsite eleven,” my father returned. “Heretofore that was the measuring rod. This is something beyond our present knowledge.”

“The Institute-“ began my mother, but my father put out his hand and cupped the ring in it, hiding it from sight. So hidden, he restored it to a small bag and slipped that into his inner tunic pocket.

“This is not to be spoken of!” he ordered sharply. And from that moment on we would not speak of it as he well knew. He had trained us very well. But neither did he send it to the Institute, nor, I was sure, did he seek any other official information concerning it. But that he studied and tested it by all methods known, and they were not a few, that I also learned.

I became used to seeing him in his small laboratory, at his desk, the ring on a square of black cloth before him, staring down at it as if by the very strength of his will he would extract its secret. If it had ever had any beauty, time and the drift through space had destroyed that, and what was left was an enigma but no blazing treasure.

The mystery haunted me also, and from time to time my father would speak of various theories he had formed concerning it. He was firmly convinced that it was not meant to be an ornament, but that it had served its wearer in some manner. And he kept its possession a secret.

From the day my father had taken over the shop, he had set into its walls various hiding places. And later, upon enlarging the rooms, he had built in more such pockets. The majority of these were known to the whole family, and would answer to hand pressure from any of us. But there were a few he showed only to me. And one of these, in the laboratory, held the ring. My father altered the seal there to answer only to our two thumbs, and he had me seal and unseal it several times before he was satisfied.

Then he waved me to sit down opposite him.

“Vondar Ustle arrives tomorrow,” he began abruptly. “He will bring an apprentice warrant with him. When he leaves, you go with him-“

I could not believe my hearing. As eldest son, apprenticeship, save to my father, was not for me. If anyone went to serve another master it would be Faskel. But before I could raise a question, my father went on with as much explanation as I was ever to get from him.

“Vondar is a master gemologist, though he chooses to travel rather than set up an establishment on any one planet. There is no better teacher in the galaxy. I have good reason to be sure of that. Listen well, Murdoc - this shop is not for you. You have a talent, and a man who does not develop his talent is a man who ever eats dry oat-cake while before him sits a rich meat dish, a man who chooses a zircon when he need only reach out his hand to pick up a diamond. Leave this shop to Faskel-“

“But he-“

My father smiled thinly. “No, he is not one who has a great eye for what is to be seen, beyond a fat purse and the value in credits. A shopkeeper is a shopkeeper, and you are not meant for such. I have waited a long time for a man such as Ustle, one on whom I can depend to be the teacher you must have. In my day I was known as a master at valuing, but I served in murky ways. You must walk free of such ties, and you can gain such freedom only by cutting loose now from the very name you carry on Angkor. Also- you must see more than one world, walk other planets, if you are to be all that you can be. It is known that planetary magnetic fields can influence human behavior, some ebb and flow in them producing changes in the brain. Alertness and sensibility are stimulated by these changes; memory can be fostered the brighter, ideas incited. I want what you can learn from Ustle during the next five planet years.”

“Something to do with the space stone-?”

He nodded. “I can no longer go seeking knowledge, but you who have a mind like unto mine are not rooted. Before I die I want to know what that ring holds, and what it did or can do for the man who wears it!”

Once more he got up and brought out the ring bag, removed the band with its dull stone, and turned it about in his fingers.

There was an old superstition once believed in by our species,” he said slowly, “that we left impressions of ourselves on material things we had owned, providing those objects were closely tied into our destinies. Here-“ Of a sudden he tossed the ring at me. I was unprepared, but I caught it, almost on reflex, out of the air. For all the months we had had it under this roof, that was the first time I had held it.

The metal was cold, with a gritty surface. And it seemed to me, as it rested in my palm, the cold grew stronger, so that my skin tingled with it. But I lifted it to eye level and peered at the stone. The clouded surface was as gritty as the band. If it had ever held fire in its heart, that was long since quenched or clouded over. I wondered briefly if it could be detached from that rough setting and recut, to regain the life it had lost. But knew also that my father would never attempt to do that. Nor, I decided, could I. As it was, the mystery was all. It was not the ring itself but what lay behind it that was of importance. And now my father’s plans for me also made sense - I would be the seeker for a solution to our mystery.

So I became Ustle’s apprentice. And my father proved right; such an instructor is seldom found. My master might have made several fortunes had he wished to root on one of the luxury worlds, set up as a designer and merchant. But to him the quest for the perfect stone was far more meaningful than selling it. He did design - usually during our voyages his mind and his fingers were busy, turning out patterns which other, less talented men were eager to buy when he wanted to offer them. But his passion was exploration of the secrets of new-found worlds, doing his own bargaining with natives for uncut stones not far from where they were first unearthed.

He laughed at the frauds he uncovered - the lesser stones soaked in herbs or chemicals to make them more resemble the precious, the gems treated by heat to change their color. He taught me odd ways to impress native sellers so that they respected one’s wisdom and brought out the better rather than the worse. Such things as that a human hair stretched across real jade will not burn, even though you set match to it.

Planet time is reckoned in years, space time less easily. A man who makes many voyages does not age as quickly as the earthbound. I do not know how old Vondar was, but if he were judged by his store of knowledge, he must have outstripped my father. We went far from Angkor, but in time we returned to it. Only I had no crumb, not even infinitesimally small, to offer my father on the history of the space ring.

I had not been more than a day under our own roof when I knew that all was not well there. Faskel was older. When I looked upon him and then upon my own face in my mother’s well-polished mirror, I would have said he was the elder by birth. Also he was more assertive, taking over the role of my father’s assistant, making decisions even within my father’s hearing. And Hywel Jern did not lift even an eyebrow in correction of his presumption.

My sister was married. Her dowry had been enough to bring her the son of a Councilor, to my mother’s great content. Though she had vanished from the house as if she had never lived, “my daughter, the Councilor’s son’s lady” was so ever on my mother’s lips as to make of my sister a haunting ghost.

Of this household I was no longer a well-fitting part. Though Faskel masked for the most part his displeasure at my return, he became more and more officious in conducting the business when I was present though I did nothing to confirm his suspicions that I had returned to supersede him. Once I had thought the shop all important, but off world so many doors had opened to me that now it seemed a very dull way to spend one’s days, and I wondered that my father could have chosen it.

He roused himself to ask questions about my journeying, so I spent most of my time in his inner office retailing, not without some satisfaction, all I had learned. Though now and then a crisp comment reduced my self-esteem and sent me into confusion, for he made it clear that much of this he already knew.

However, after my first burst of enthusiasm, it became increasingly clear that if my father listened, he heard, or strove to hear, more than my spate of words. Behind his interest - and it was interest; in that I was not deceived - lurked some preoccupation which was not concerned with me or my discoveries. Nor did he mention the space ring, and I too had a strange reluctance to introduce the subject. Not once did he bring out that treasure to brood over it as he had in the past.

It was not until I had been four days home that the shadow which I sensed on the household drew closer. Like all shops, we would remain closed during the festival. It was customary for families to entertain kinfolk and friends, making up parties to go from home to home. My mother spoke pridefully at the table that night of our going to Darina’s and being included with them in the Councilor’s own group for a pleasure cruise on the river in his own barge.

But when she had done, my father shook his head. He would, he announced, stay home. I had never seen my mother, though of late years she might have grown more assertive, stand against my father’s pronouncements. But this time her anger exploded, and she stated that that choice might be his, but that the rest of us should go. To this he nodded and so I found that indeed I was absorbed in what seemed to me a very boring party. My mother beamed and nursed another dream, for Faskel was ever by the side of the Councilor’s niece - though it appeared to me that that lady shared her smiles with several young men and that the portion of them which fell to my brother were not particularly warm. As for me, I escorted my mother, and perhaps pleasured her a little by the fact that I was traveled and that once or twice the Councilor singled me out to ask of off-world matters.

As the barge slipped down the river, there grew a kind of impatience in me, and I kept thinking of my father and who he might be seeing in the locked shop. For he had hinted to me that he stayed there, not only because of boredom, but because be had a definite reason for wishing the house to be empty that day so that he might meet with someone.

There had always been visitors whom my father had not made known to his family, some of them using darkness for a cloak, entering and leaving without their faces being seen. That he trafficked in things of uncertain history must have been known to the authorities. But no man ever spoke out against him. For the Thieves’ Guild has a long arm and they move to protect one who is of service to them. My father may have outwardly retired from their Veep councils, but did a man ever retire from the Guild? Rumor said no.

Only there had been something in my father’s attitude this time which made me uneasy, as if he both wished for and feared whatever meeting was to take place. And the more I thought on his manner, the more I decided that fear - if one could term it fear - had been uppermost. Perhaps, as my father had suggested, my travel had heightened in me a sensitivity which the rest of the family did not share.

At any rate I excused myself before sunset with the lame explanation that I must meet with Vondar, though my mother did not believe me. And I summoned one of the small boats for hire, ordering the oarsman to make good time back to port. Only so thronged were the waterways that our speed was no more than a weary crawl, and I discovered myself sitting tensely, willing us forward, my hands gripped tightly together.

Again, on landing, I found the streets crowded, and worked my way with impatient thrusting, which earned me some harsh words, splashes of scented water. The shop front was closed even as we had left it, and I went through the narrow garden at the back.

As my hand fell upon the door lock, the thumb against the print which would release it, I felt, as a blow, the full force of all the unease which had plagued me. It was dark and cool in the family rooms. I stopped by the door which gave upon the shop to listen, thinking that if my father still entertained his mysterious caller, he would not thank me to burst in upon them. But there was no sound, and when I rapped upon the door to the office, it echoed hollowly.

When I pushed, the door gave only a little, and I was forced to exert pressure of shoulder to force my way in. Then I heard the rasp of wood against stone, and saw that my fathers desk, overturned, blocked my entrance. I thrust desperately and was in a wildly upset room.

In his chair sat my father, the ropes which held him upright stained with his blood. His eyes glared at me fiercely in denial of what had come to him. But that denial was the glare of a dead man. All else was overturned, some boxes smashed to bits as if the searcher, not finding what he sought, had wrecked the inanimate in his temper.

There are many beliefs in many worlds concerning the end of life and what may lie thereafter. How can any man deny that some of them may be true? We have no proof one way or another. My father was dead when I came to him, and dead by violence. But perhaps it was his will, his need for revenge, or to communicate, which hung on in that room. For I knew, as if he had indeed spoken, what lay at the roots of this.

So I passed him and found that inconspicuous bit of carving on the wall. To that I set my thumb as he had taught me. The small space opened, but not easily; it might have been some time since it was last bared. I took out the bag, feeling through it the form of the ring. That I drew forth and held before my father as if he could still see and know that I had it. And I promised him that what he had sought, I would seek too, and that perhaps so I would find those who had slain him. For this I was sure of, that the ring held the key to his death.

But this was not the last of the shocks and losses which were to come to me on Angkor. For after the authorities had come and the family had gathered and been questioned, she whom I had always called mother turned on me and said, in a high, fast voice, as if she dared not be interrupted:

“Faskel is master here. For he is blood and bone of me, heir to my father who was lord here before Hywel Jern came. And so will I swear before the Council.”

That she favored Faskel I had always known but there was a chill in her words now that I did not understand. She continued, making the reason plain.

“You are only a duty child, Murdoc. Though mark me true, I have never made the less of you in this house because of that. And no one can say that I have!”

A duty child - one of those embryos shipped from a populous world to a frontier planet in order to vary the stock, by law assigned to some family to be raised and nurtured as their own. There were many such in the early settlement of any world. But I had never thought much about them. It did not greatly matter to me that I was not of her blood. But that I was not the son of Hywel - that I hated! I think she read this in my eyes, for she shrank from me. But she need not have feared any trouble, for I turned and went from that room, and that house, and later from Angkor. All I took with me was my heritage - the ring out of space.

THREE

The torch which had been in the room of the sanctuary when first I entered was sputtering to the end as I woke. What had the voice said? For the space of four torches I could shelter there. I looked at the floor. There were three more torches lying ready. Now I got up to force the dying one from its hold, light another in its place.

But after four torches- what? Would I be thrust-out into the streets of Koonga again? At intervals I questioned the walls of the room, but no answer came. Twice I searched again, seeking some cunningly hidden exit. There was a building frustration within me. I had passed part of a night here, by my timekeeper, and some of the day thereafter. The four torches, I calculated roughly, would cover perhaps three days. But long before that the ship on which Vondar and I had passage would lift. Nor would its Captain worry if we did not claim those passages. Once planetside, passengers were strictly on their own. A Captain would take steps to rescue a member of his closely knit crew, for the ship unit became as tightly welded as a family or clan, but strangers he would not aid.

What chance had I left? Was I under observation? How would the keepers of this place know when their torches were exhausted? Or had they through the years fallen into such routine that they could judge approximately? And what was their purpose? What did they get out of this service? A temple would accept a gift for a god. And to me this sanctuary continued to suggest a religious establishment.

I lay down again on the bed, rolled so that I faced the wall and that my breast was hidden from the room. My hands moved stealthily, for I had to believe that there was a watcher. If I could not hold to that hope, I had nothing left. Two pockets in my safe-belt. Between thumb and forefinger rolled the sleekness of the gems I carried. I palmed them and lay still, letting them believe I slept.

Vondar had had the best of our stock already locked in the safe of the ship. Eventually those should reach the storehouse of the jeweler to whom they had been consigned, there to wait for one who would never claim them.

What I carried were inferior stones, or so reckoned on inner planets. Only here two of them might well present a temptation to any watcher. Both were fruits of my own trading - one a carved crystal in the form of a small demonic head, with rubies inset for eyes, fang teeth of yellow sapphires, a weird, small curiosity. The very force of the carving might make it attractive on this world. The other was a thumb-sized “soothing stone” of red jade, one of those pieces the men of Gambool carry to finger while they talk business. There is a sensuous satisfaction in the handling of such a piece, and perhaps they are wise in their choice of this tension relaxer.

How much is a life worth? I could empty my safebelt- but I knew I must reserve a second payment if my plan was to succeed. And I had chosen as best I could. Now I rolled over and sat up. The light of the new torch was brighter than the old.

The guesting table- I looked at it. Then I crossed the room to sit on one of its flanking stools, lay the stones on its surface. I did not raise my voice in any demand this time but tried to be as one bargaining in the market place.

“It is said that for all things there is a price,” I began as if I spoke to someone who sat on the other stool to my right. “There are those who sell, and those who wish to buy. I am a stranger in your land, upon your world of Tanth. By no fault of my own I find myself a hunted man. My friend and master is dead, slain also for no fault - for since when have the Green Robes ever before chosen one not of their belief to satisfy their master? Is it not said the unwilling sacrifice is the lesser one and not pleasing to the power to which it is sped?

“It is true that I have killed, but only to defend myself. I am willing to offer blood price if that is required of me. But remember, I am from off world, and so cannot be bound by the laws of your land unless I willfully and willingly break them by intent - answering only to my own authority for all else.”

Did anyone hear me? Was Tanth so removed from the civilized worlds that the Confederation’s authority could be flouted? What would priests of a local god care for a rule based light-years away? Nor could I flatter myself that Vondar’s death would set any fleets in motion to demand answers from Tanth’s inhabitants. Like the Free Traders, we accepted risks when we traveled the far star lanes.

“Blood price will I pay,” I repeated, fighting my mounting tension, willing my voice to remain even and low. I opened my hand and allowed the fingering piece to lie in the open. “This is a gem of virtue. He who holds it while thinking of or speaking on matters of import will discover his temper remains calm, his mind clear-“ I wrapped my tongue in the rolling formality of the native speech, using the wording common to men of substance. In such little things sometimes there is great influence.

“To this gem of power”-I allowed the carved crystal to be seen now, the leering face uppermost “I will add this talisman. As one can see, it bears the face of Umphal-“ (Which it did not, having come from another world, where that nightmare demon was unknown. But it was enough like the effigies of Umphal I had seen here to pass.) “Set such on a frontlet and what fear need a man longer have of the grimace of the redeyed power. For seeing his own face, Umphal will flee - is that not so? Thus doubly do I pay blood price, with a stone which gives men wisdom, and one which promises protection from that which rides the night north winds.”

Trying to keep out of mind the thought that I might be speaking only to unhearing walls, that there were no eyes which watched, I spoke again:

“There is a Free Trader planeted at your port. For my blood price I ask only speech with her Captain.”

Then I sat in silence, watching the two gems on the table, straining to hear the slightest sound which might reveal I did have a listener. I could not believe that after a period of time within this room sanctuary ended and that the desperate souls who came here had no other recourse.

I could not be sure - a click - had I heard a click? Dared I believe that I had heard such a sound? It had come from behind me. I waited a long moment and then arose and went to the niche, as if to drink from the flagon there. In the small basket beside that lay something which had not been there before - a flat cake. Once more I picked up that tantalizing bell and was about to ring it when the basket caught my attention. It had been shoved forward, leaving marks in the dust. By the look of those the stone behind it had slid out.

Certainly I had not been mistaken in my hearing of that click. There was an opening in the wall and I had been observed through it. They had furnished me with food. The cake was crumbly and smelled of coarse cheese, as it had been split open and smeared with that. To off-world taste it was unpleasant, but I ate it. Hunger can conquer much.

Waiting is the hardest test to which one can be put and waiting was now mine. The torch had burned down and I was about to set another in its place when, without warning, a man appeared in the doorway through which I had first come. Though I went for my laser, he had me covered before my hand touched its butt.

“Steady on!” He spoke Basic, coming a step or two farther into the room. I saw a ship’s tunic with the insignia of Cargo Master on the collar. “Keep your hands in plain sight.”

He was an off-worlder, and his uniform was that of a Free Trader. I drew a deep breath. In so much had my plea carried.

“You have a proposition- he eyed me narrowly, with little cordiality. “Speak your piece.” There was a snap of urgency to that as if he were there against his will with danger breathing hot upon him.

“I want passage out.” I cut my answer to that bare statement.

He had backed around so that his shoulders were at the wall - and faced me warily. A Cargo Master of a Free Trader needs must be more than a merchant. He does not grow fat and sleek, and slow of reflex, no matter if he is not a fighting man - officially - but a trader.

“With half the city to tear you down should you step upon the street?” he countered. Still his laser was aimed at my middle. There was no softening for my plight to be read on his face. The Free Traders are clansmen, with their ship their home. I was not of his brood.

“Tell me, Cargo Master”-I did not approach him, and now I must be a master bargainer indeed if I was to win my life “what have you heard of me?”

“That you spat upon one priest, slew another-“

“I am a gem trader, late apprentice to Vondar Ustle - you have heard that name?”

“I have heard. He travels far. What of it? Does that make your crime the less here in Koonga?”

“There was no crime.” How could I make the truth so plain he would believe me? “Do you think a man thrusts a rod into a yaeger-wasp nest and turns it deliberately, when he is in his right mind? We were in a tavern - the Sign of the Mottled Corby. Our business here was done, we had passage on the Voyringer. Then the Green Robes came in and set up that infernal spinning arrow of theirs. We thought we were in no danger, being off-worlders. When it stopped I swear it pointed between the two of us. Then the Robes moved in to take us-“

“Why?” I saw the disbelief in his eyes. “They do not play such games with off-worlders.”

“As we thought also, Cargo Master. Yet they did. And Vondar was knifed down when he tried to resist. I burned a priest and was near enough to the door to get free. I had heard of this sanctuary-so-“

“Tell me - what was Vondar Ustle’s hallmark? And it I have seen, I warn you.” That shot from his lips as a ray might have from his laser.

“A half-moon wrought in opal with the signet, between its horns, a Gryphon’s head in firestones.” I made prompt reply, though I wondered what this Free Trader would know of a master gemologist’s mark, which he would display for identification only to an equal in rank.

He nodded and slipped his laser into its holster. “What enemy did Ustle make here?”

That thought had plagued me also since I had had the time within this hole to think. For it was reasonable that, were a desire for revenge strong enough, my master might have been set up for such a kill. Though their demon was supposed to select his prey by chance alone, without aid from his servant priests, rumor suggested that he sometimes had assistance of mortal means, that a suitable gift to his shrine could produce a sacrifice which would please more than just the Green Robes and their lord. But there had been no clash with any local power. We had visited Hamzar, inspected his wares and purchased what Vondar thought good, exchanged trade gossip with him. There had been one visit to the nomads’ market and some dickering for uncut crystals out of the salt deserts, but both sides had been pleased with the deal. I could see no local tie-up with any trouble. And now, though I would have given much to be able to produce such a neat solution, I had to admit the truth.

“It need not have been of Tanth at all,” the Cargo Master replied. And he watched me as if I could then supply name and reason. A moment later, he continued. “Some strokes are aimed from longer distances. But- if you wish to take knife-oath for your master later, that is your affair. Always supposing you do come out alive. Now, what do you want of us? You say passage offworld - how?”

“How would you do it?” I countered. “I will pay well to lift in your ship, and for passage to the nearest planet with a second-stage port. And do not tell me” now I dared push a little; I could lose nothing by it, for my whole chance hung on the slenderest of threads “that you cannot get me forth if you wish. The will of the Free Traders is too well known.”

“We care for our own. You are not one of us.”

“You care for your cargo also. Then accept me as cargo - a profitable cargo.”

He suddenly smiled. “Cargo, is it?” Then his  smile vanished and his eyes narrowed as he regarded me, as if by that gaze he could indeed transform me into a box or bale, to be stored in the hold of his ship. “You talk of profit?” he began, brisk again. “What sort of profit and how much?”

I turned away and sought my safe-belt. Then I showed him what I held and it took fire in the torchlight. Profit of a half year’s careful trading on my own - two of them matched as closely as anyone could hope to find - Eyes of Kelem. They were gold, and scarlet, with flecks of green deep in them. And if you looked upon them long, the color flowed. Not a fortune, no. But, offered in the proper market, worth a whole voyage for a trader who was only average lucky most of the time. They were my best and I knew he guessed that.

He did not try to bargain, or belittle my offering. Whether he did indeed have some half sympathy for my plight, I do not know. But he looked at the stones and then to me, nodding, holding forth his hand and closing it over them in a manner which showed that he knew the rules of our trade also. Free Traders are alert to any cargo and deal in many things.

“Come!”

I followed him out of that room, leaving my offering behind me on the guesting table. For I was satisfied that they had kept their part of the bargain. We were again in the hall where the torches blazed behind the face, but these were now quenched and I saw through the holes the light of day. The Cargo Master stooped and picked up a bundle lying there, shaking it out to show me a worn uniform tunic and the cap of a crewman.

“Put them on.”

I laughed, feeling a little lightheaded. “It would seem you came prepared,” I said as I pulled the tunic over my head and shoulders, sealed it at collar and belt. It was small for me, but not too much so.

“I was-“ He hesitated. “The news is loud. Ustle was known to our Captain. When the message came through he was enough interested to send me.”

The set of his jaw told me that that was all I would get out of him on the subject. But I was the more heartened by this evidence that he had come prepared to get me out - though I would still have liked to go through the door weapon in hand.

We were not, however, to go that way, for the Free Trader walked briskly to the wall on our left, slapped his hand against it. Though that touch could not have moved the heavy stone, it swung inward, disclosing another narrow way, and he stepped confidently into that, leaving me to follow. When the stone swung back behind us, we were left in a thick dark, reminding me unpleasantly of the alleys through which I had earlier fled.

It was a very narrow passage, our shoulders brushing wall on either side. I bumped into my guide, who had stopped short. There was a click and then a blaze of bright light.

“Come!” He reached out a hand to pull me after him. I blinked and screwed up my eyes against the assault of that brilliant sun. We were in another alley, piled along the wall with containers of refuse. Things scuttled in the slime under our boots and my guide swore roundly as he kicked out at something which hissed at him. Six strides, as long and fast as we could make them, brought us into another and much cleaner byway. I had to fight my desire to run, or to look about me for attackers. It was necessary to put on the cloak of unconcern and match my pace to the Cargo Master’s.

Then we were through the gates of the port. As I had thought, the Voyringer had lifted and only  the trader remained, fins down, on the blast-scorched ground. The Cargo Master caught at my sleeve.

“Trouble- maybe-“

But I had already sighted that blaze of bright robes around the ship. There was a reception committee waiting. Perhaps just on the general principle that a hunted off-worlder would make for the only ship left.

“Drunk- you’re an off-ship drunk!” The Cargo Master hissed at me in a sound much like that made by the alley scavenger. “This ought to do it !” I saw the blow coming, but I was totally unprepared to dodge it. A blast of pain spread from my jaw, and I must have gone down and out in the same moment, for there my memories of Tanth come to an abrupt stop.

There was a tap-tapping of jeweler’s hammers in my skull, setting tighter and tighter a brazen band about my brain. I could not lift a hand to stop that torment. Then liquid splashed over me and I drew a choking gasp of air, which seemed to subdue for the moment the worst of the hammering. I opened my eyes.

A face hung over me, two faces, one very close, the other blurry and at a greater distance. The close one was furred, with pricked, tassled ears, green-gold eyes. It opened a blacklipped mouth and I looked into a wedge-shaped space set with fangs, and a curling, roughsurfaced tongue. It was a small face-

Now the larger approached and I tried to focus on it. Spacetanned, with close-cropped hair, for the rest the face of any crewman, ageless and now expressionless.

I heard words-“Well, so you are back with us-“

Back? Back where? Memory stirred sluggishly - back in the cell of the sanctuary? No! I tried to sit up and my head whirled so that I was sick. But as ungentle hands thrust me flat again, I felt something else which could never have vibrated through Koongan walls - I was not only aboard a ship, but we were in flight. And the vast flood of relief which followed that realization carried me back into a limbo which was half unconsciousness, half sleep.

So I found myself aboard the Vestris, though the first days in her were not the usual spent by a passenger. The Cargo Master had indeed knocked me out to carry me aboard as his drunken assistant. But it would seem I was of less hardy structure than those his fists had dealt with heretofore, and I continued semiconscious for a longer space than the medico liked. When I was again fully aware of my surroundings, I lay in a cramped cubby off the medico’s cabin, used by the seriously ill. It was some time before I had my interview with Captain Isuran. Like all Free Traders, he was ship-born, shipbred, of a type growing more and more apart from planetorientated men. All the Free Traders I had known before had been only casual acquaintances, and I found myself oddly ill at ease with these in such close quarters. I told him my story and he listened. And he asked who had wanted Vondar Ustle dead, but that I could not tell him. That there had been some tie in the past between my master and this Captain, I was sure. But Isuran did not explain and I dared not ask questions. It was enough that he would take me to another world, one on which I could contact sources who had known me as Vondar’s assistant.

I had some time to meditate upon the future, for space travel is sheer monotony once one is off world. The crewmen develop hobbies to occupy mind and hand. For me there was nothing but my thoughts. And they were not so pleasant I cared to dwell long upon them.

Ustle had had contacts on many worlds, and I thought one or two might be willing to give me a chance at a planetside job. But, though I knew gems as a buyer, I was no designer, nor did I want a settled existence. I had tasted too deeply of Vondar’s way of life. My safe-belt was very light now. And I would have to reach a second-stage port to tap past resources for expense money. Also - my savings were limited. I could not keep on as we had done alone. And there were very few, if any, Vondar Ustles in search of apprentices.

Also - what had been behind Vondar’s death? That it was planned and not by the Green Robes alone, I had come to accept. But, though I tried - sifting memories - I could not bring to mind a single happening which would plant so deep a reason for someone to wish him dead. And perhaps not only him, for the Green Robes had moved in on both of us.

This was the second time death had abruptly come so close to me. I thought again of my father, or of him I would always think of as my father, for he had treated me as of his own flesh and blood and had settled for me (knowing as he must have how matters would go after his death) a future he thought would be the best. Who had been his visitor that day? And the space ring - my hand sought the last and deepest pocket of my safe-belt. I did not unseal it, only felt through it the shape of the band and that lusterless stone. Was I right that this was what my father’s killer had sought? If so - could it also be-? I did not see how this could have followed us to Tanth. All the property on the bodies of their victims belonged to the Green Robes and were offered to their dead demon. No one but their order would have had the ring had I fallen prey to them.

I had a handful of facts and could go on endlessly building many surmises, without ever being sure that any were close to the truth. Although in the meanwhile I must seek some way of earning my living, I would, in time, have to learn what lay behind Vondar’s killing. For I had such ties with him as would indeed demand the equivalent of the Free Traders’ knife-oath.

But I was still far from the solution of my twin problems when the Vestris prepared for a landing, not on the planet at which I aimed, but on a lesser world. Cargo Master Ostrend briefed me as to their reasons for the landfall. It was a lushly overgrown land, overwarm, too, to our tastes, with a nonhuman, batrachian-evolved native race. What those had to barter was a substance strained and fermented from certain plants, medicinal in nature. What the Vestris gave in return was seed shellfish, to be loosed in beds, considered a great delicacy.

“You might be interested in these.” Ostrend took from his lockbox three objects and set them out on the top of his swing desk.

They were a pinkish purple in shade, and each was a tiny figure. I brought out my jeweler’s lens to study them closer. Figures they were, as weirdly grotesque as any of the demons dreamed up by the imaginations of the artists of Tanth. They seemed to be fashioned of nacre, though not carved. I had not seen their like before. They were oddities which might appeal to collectors of the curious.

“There is a planter of shellfish beds - Salmscar. He has been experimenting with some of the mutated crustaceans. That’s what keeps our trade going here; the things mutate so quickly that they cannot be bred true past about the second year. He plants tiny metallic ‘seeds’ in the mutants and in about three or four years gets these. Just a hobby with him. But you might do a spot of trading if you are interested.”

I knew the Free Traders and their jealously guarded sources of items. If the mutant pearls had any value, Ostrend would not have made that suggestion. Unless, of course, he was either testing me or setting a trap - now I saw dangers standing to right and left. It was almost as if he were urging me to break their ship law. But I would not tell him so. A very small third mystery to add to the others. I expressed interest, which I did not have to feign, and did wonder what I had that I could offer for some of the things - not that I could use my few assets on a gamble, nor would I attempt any trade without full consent of my present shipmates.

FOUR

Since the ingrown community of the Free Traders was a closed clan and an outsider remained that, I was left very much to my own company, save for one member of the crew. The furry face which had hung so close to mine at my first awakening was one I was to see again and again. For Valcyr, the ship’s cat, apparently decided that I was an object of interest second to none, and spent long periods of time crouched on bunk or floor of the cabin allotted to me, simply staring.

I was not used to companionship with animals and at first her attentions irked me, for I could not throw off the absurd feeling that behind those round, seldomblinking eyes was a mind which marked my every move, sifting and assessing me and all I did. Yet in time I came to tolerate her, and finally, when it became apparent that the crew were not inclined, beyond a distant civility, to friendliness, I found myself talking to her for want of other conversation. For among themselves the Traders spoke a language of their own, unintelligible to me so that any attempt to follow their speech was fruitless.

After my interview with Ostrend I returned to my cubby to discover Valcyr stretched on my berth taking her ease. She was a lithe and beautiful creature, her fur short and very thick, of a uniform silver-gray, save for her tail, where there were dark rings. She had moments when she displayed affection, and now she raised her head to rub against my hand, while from her throat rumbled a purr. Since such favors were rare, I was flattered enough to continue to stroke her while I considered the Cargo Master’s suggestion.

We would planet on this world shortly, near a trading post where the men of the Vestris had been before. There were no cities, the natives being nomads by inclination, wandering in family-clan groups along the rivers from one marshy spot to the next. A few more civilized and enterprising clans had staked out semipermanent settlements near places where crustacean beds could be fostered. But these were no more than collections of flimsy reed-and-mud huts.

What I had brought to the Vestris had been carried on my person. Now I took inventory of my scanty possessions to see if I had anything at all which could serve as a trade item. The few small stones still in my safe-belt were not to be touched. Not that it was likely they would interest Salmscar. I regretted the packs abandoned at the inn on Tanth, the luggage gone with the freighter. But if one permitted regret for little, one might as well remember all the rest lost on Tanth. I had nothing to risk here. I said as much to Valcyr, and she yawned widely and set her teeth gently upon my hand to suggest she was no longer interested in being petted.

However, when we set down, I was ready enough to go planetside. The chance to get firm earth under one’s feet is always acceptable to any traveler, unless he is as wedded to space as a crewman - and even crewmen must earth now and then.

What greeted our noses as we went down the outflung landing ramp was more than the scorch of burning from our findown - it was a stink of chemicals, enough to make one hold one’s nose. Ostrend said the natives favored this section of hot springs and volcanic action, and now we could see rocks, water- and steam-worn into strange shapes. At intervals steam and vile smells burst through holes in the ground.

Beyond this tormented land was the bluish foliage of the marshes, while the various overflows from the caldron lands lapped on to feed a yellow river. The heat from the steam was almost stifling, the more so when combined with the chemical stench. We coughed and sputtered as we picked our way along a path, to find, on the banks of the river, the village we sought.

Ostrend stood there, his trade board between arm and hip, looking about in open puzzlement. After his description I had not expected to see much in the way of buildings. But certainly we looked now on what was not even the most primitive attempt at providing shelter, but rather an area of ruin and decay.

Mounds of ill-smelling reed stuff, with dried mud flaking off in great chunks, humped here and there. Among this litter nothing moved until a thing which was more leather-winged lizard than bird arose with a squawk and flapped awkwardly across the river. None of the traders pressed past Ostrend, but their heads swung from left to right and back again as if they were men suddenly suspicious of a trap.

The Cargo Master took from his belt a slender metal rod. Under his fingers it expanded longer and longer until he had a pole of double his own height. To the tip end he affixed a small pennon of bright yellow before he planted it fast in the soft mud of the riverbank. From comments, I gathered that, the village being deserted for some time by the signs, we could do no more than wait for the return of the natives - always providing that they were able to return. But since the visits of the Vestris were regular this could be expected to occur, again always excepting the fact that some disaster had not put an end to the established custom.

Captain Isuran, philosophical as a Free Trader must learn to be, was not happy. While his ship did not run on a tight schedule, yet time did set some barriers on each planeting. We could not wait too long before taking off. However, a failure to trade here would upset all plans and make necessary rearrangements to cover the losses caused by such an abortive stop.

Ostrend was in conference with the Captain for the hours that followed, while the rest of the crew speculated as to what might have happened, taking turns at sentry duty by the pennon. Since I was excluded from that, I allowed my own curiosity rein and explored, though not outside the limit wherein I could sight the skypointing nose of the ship.

Save for the novelty of the hot springs, and those soon palled, their heat and smell being more than anyone could take for long, there were few sights worth seeing. The flying thing which had fled our entrance into the deserted village was the only living creature I had sighted. Even insect life here either was remarkably sparse, or for some reason shunned the vicinity of the ship. At last I squatted down by the side of one of the small streams which issued out of the section of hot pots and gushers, inspecting it for gravel. The gem hunter’s preoccupation could grip me even here. But I saw nothing in the mess I scooped out and washed which held any promise.

There were some bits of a curiously dull black, which had the look of no mineral or the like, but of a kind of fuzzy burr. Yet when I separated them from the sand and stones with a stick, I discovered them to be extremely hard. Even pounding with a stone did not crush them, or even mar their velvety-seeming surface. I did not believe them seeds, or vegetable refuse, and my interest in them grew, until I had about a dozen laid in a row in the sun, being cautious at first not to touch them with my fingers. Nature provides some nasty traps on many planets. They had no beauty, and I did not think any value. But the contrast between their suggestion of softness to the eye, and their real hardness of surface was odd enough to make me gather up three for future examination. There are gems which must be “peeled,” worked down in layers from their unattractive outer coatings or shells. One of little worth may so be turned into something of value. And I had some vague ideas that perhaps these might hide a surprise under that fuzzy surface, though I had neither the tools nor the skill needed for such a task.

As I knotted my choice into a square of seal-foam, Valcyr came walking, with that particular sure-footed daintiness of her species, along the bank of the small runlet. She progressed with nose to earth, almost as might a hound on a warm trail, and she was manifestly sniffing something which absorbed her attention.

Then she reached my line of rejected ovoids and nosed each avidly. To my limited human nostrils they had no scent, but it was plain they did for the cat. Squatting down, she began to lick the largest, having sniffed them all. Fearing for her, I tried to knock it out of reach, but a lightning swift slash from unsheathed claws, ears flattened to skull, and a low growl warned me off. Sucking my bloodied fingers, I withdrew. It was plain that Valcyr guarded what she considered a treasure of price and was not minded to have any interference.

Once I had withdrawn, she went back to her licking. Now and again she picked it up in her mouth to retreat a little way before she squatted down to return to her tongue-rasping exploration of the find.

“Any luck?” Ostrend’s young assistant threw a long shadow past me as he came up.

“What are these? Have you seen them before?” I pointed to the fuzzy stones scattered about by Valcyr as she had made her examination and choice.

Chiswit sat on his heels to study them. “Never saw them before. In fact”-he looked up and about “this whole stream is new here. Maybe one of the big mudholes blew its top. Wait! Do you suppose that was what happened and there was gas? That could have driven out the Toads. They like the stink and the heat, but maybe they could not stand up to gas.”

“Could be.” But guesses about the disappearance of the natives, interesting as that might be, were not what I sought. I wanted information concerning the stones. If stones they were not, that was all I could term them. “You say you have never seen these. Was Valcyr with you when you planeted here last?”

“Yes. She has been ship’s cat for a long time.”

“And you never saw her do that before?” I pointed to where she now lay, the stone between her outstretched forepaws, her tongue working over and around it with absorbed concentration.

Chiswit stared. “No- what is she doing? Why, she’s licking one of these things! Why did you let her-?” He scrambled to his feet and took two strides. Valcyr might not have seen him coming, but she seemed to sense a danger to her find. With it in her jaws, she was gone in a bound, heading away from the ship, weaving in and out among the twisted rocks.

We ran after her, but it was no use; she had disappeared - doubtless into some crevice where she could enjoy her find in peace. Chiswit turned on me with a demand as to why I had not earlier separated her from it. I showed him my bleeding hand and reported my failure. But the crewman was obviously upset and hunted through the rocky outcrops, calling and coaxing.

I did not believe that Valcyr was going to appear until she was ready, the independence of cats being their marked characteristic. But I trailed him, peering into each shallow, cavelike hole, rounding rocks in search.

We found her at last, lying on a small ledge under a deep overhang. Had it not been for the motion of her head as she swept the stone back and forth with her tongue, we might have missed her altogether, so close in color was her fur to the porous stone on which she lay. As Chiswit, speaking in a coaxing voice, went to his knees and held out his hand to her, she flattened her ears to her skull, hissed, and then gulped, and the stone vanished!

She could not have swallowed it! The one she had chosen had been the largest of those I had fished out of the stream, and it had been an ovoid far too big to descend her gullet. Only the fact remained that that was what had happened and we both had seen it. She crawled out of her crevice and sat licking her lips like a cat who has dined well. When Chiswit reached for her, she suffered him to pick her up, kneading paws on his arm as he carried her, purring loudly, her eyes half shut, with no signs that the swallowing of her find had done her harm, or choked her. Chiswit started at a swift trot for the ship, while I knelt to look at the ledge, still hoping that the stone might have rolled somewhere, unable to believe it was now inside Valcyr.

The gray rock of the ledge was bare. And had the stone rolled, it would lie now somewhere directly before me. But it did not. I even sifted the gravely sand through my fingers, to produce nothing. Then I ran a forefinger over the ledge. There was a faint dampness, perhaps from Valcyr’s saliva. But, in addition, something else, a tingling, almost a shock as I touched one point. The second time I put tip of finger to the same spot there was nothing but the damp, and that was drying fast.

“We saw her, I tell you! She swallowed a stone, a queer black stone-“ Chiswit’s voice rang down the corridor as I came along to the medico’s quarters.

“You saw the ray report - nothing in her throat. She cannot have swallowed it, man. It probably rolled away and-“

“It did not, I looked,” I said quietly as I came to the doorway.

Valcyr was in the medico’s arms, purring ecstatically, her claws working in and out. She had the appearance of a cat very well pleased with herself and the world.

“Then it was not a stone, but something able to dissolve,” he answered me assuredly.

I took out my impovrished bag. “What do you call these? They are the same things she swallowed. I picked them out of a stream bed.”

He placed Valcyr gently on the bunk and motioned me to lay the bag on his small laboratory table. In the ship’s light the fuzziness of the stones was even more marked. He picked up a small instrument and touched the surface of the largest, then tried to scrape away some of the velvet. But the point of the knife slipped across the stone.

“I want a look at these.” He was staring as intently as Valcyr had done.

“Why not?” He might not have the tools of a gemologist, but at least he could give me some report on their substance. His interest was triggered and I thought he would work to get to the bottom of the mystery. Then I looked at Valcyr. The surface of the table on which the stones lay was very close to her. Would she be as attracted to another as she had to her first choice? Instead, she drowsily stretched out full length, her purring growing fainter, as if she were already half asleep.

Since the size of the medico’s quarters did not allow for spectators, Chiswit and I left him to his tests. But in the corridor the assistant Cargo Master asked:

“How big was that thing when she first picked it up?”

I measured off a space between two fingers. “They are all oval. She took the biggest one.”

“But she could not have swallowed it, not if it was that size!”

“Then what happened to it?” I asked, trying to remember those few instants when we had last seen the stone. Had it been as large as I thought? Perhaps she had only nosed the one I believed she had picked, and had taken another. But I did not distrust my eyes that much. I was trained to know stones and their sizes. An apprentice to such a master as Vondar could judge a stone’s size without taking it into his hand at all. True, this was something new. I had tried to crush one of those things between two rocks with no results.

“She licked it smaller,” Chiswit continued. “It is a seed or some hardened gum - and she just kept licking at it - so finally it melted.”

A reasonable explanation, but one my own tests would not allow me to accept. So - I had a paradox - Valcyr had swallowed what seemed to me a gemhard stone, and one far too large to pass her gullet. Perhaps the medico would come up with an answer. I would have to wait for that.

On the second day the Captain broke out a small scout flitter, a one-man affair, but with range enough to explore the surrounding district. We could go on waiting here fruitlessly for months and he did not want to waste the time.

Ostrend took off in it and was gone two days. He returned with the disappointing news that not only had he not found the villagers, but that he had seen no natives at all. And that there appeared to be an unusual scarcity of all life along the river and its tributaries. A few of the flying things such as we had disturbed on the first day, and which were eaters of carrion, were all he sighted. For the rest, the planet, as far as his cruising range, was as bare as if any higher forms of life had never existed at all.

At that report the Free Traders held a conference, to which I was not a party, and it was decided that they would dump their now worthless cargo of crustaceans into the usual river pens, as a sign of good faith should the natives ever return. They would also leave their trade flag flying as a symbol of their visit. But they would have to vary their future route in order to make up for the loss of trade here.

Which meant, I was curtly informed by Ostrend, that I was to continue my voyage on the Vestris for longer than planned. My first possible exit port had been that for which their medicinal cargo had been destined, and it would not now be visited. By space law I could not be summarily dumped on just any world, not when I had paid my passage, but must be carried to at least a second-stage port from which there was regular service. Now I would have to wait in boredom and impatience until we touched at such a place. And when that would be depended upon Ostrend’s luck in picking up a cargo. He was continually with the Captain, going over taped trade reports, trying to find a way to make up for this failure.

As far as could be observed, Valcyr was none the worse for her extraordinary meal - not at first. And the medico’s efforts to solve the mystery of the stones continued, until at last he came to the mess cabin, fatigue’s dark shadows under his eyes, wearing a bewildered expression. He drew a half cup of boiling water, added a caff pill, and watched it bubble and brown in an absent way that suggested he saw something very different from that ordinary shipboard drink.

“A break-through, medico?” I asked.

His eyes focused as if he saw me for the first time. “I do not know. But - that thing is alive!”

“But-“

He nodded. “Yes - but - The reading is very low - resembling hibernation level. Nothing I have can open its shell, or whatever holds that germ of life. I’ll tell you something else-“ He paused to drink the full contents of his cup in one intake of liquid. “Valcyr is going to have kittens - or something-“

“The stone? But how-“

He shrugged. “Do not ask me. I know it is against all nature as I know it. She ate that thing, you both say she did. And now she is going to have a kitten - or something-“

“I’ll tell you something else,” he added as he drew a second portion of water. “I have rayed those stones into ash. And maybe I ought to do the same to the cat-“

“Why?”

This time he dropped two pills into the steaming cup. “Because if what I think is true, it is no kitten she is carrying. In fact it may be nothing we want aboard. I will keep an eye on her from now on. When her time comes - well, I can do what is best then.” He took the second cup in a couple of gulps. When he left the mess cabin I saw that he turned to climb to the Captain’s quarters.

One of the dreads of a trading ship is an unnatural life form loose on board. There are all kinds of horror tales about what has happened to ships unfortunate enough to pick up stowaways which later turned them into drifting charnel houses. That was the very reason Valcyr and her kind had their secure position on board ship. There were other safeguards, irradiation of suspect cargo by immunization rays and the like. But still, in spite of all precautions, sometimes the alien slipped in. If it was harmless it could prove a nuisance or even a new and amusing pet. But the chances were great that such uninvited guests would be inimical.

Traders are mainly immune to diseases of planets other than their native ones. Parallel but different roads of evolution performed this essential service. But they are not always immune to bites, stings, and attack from living creatures.

Now it seemed that Valcyr, meant to be the sentry at the gate, might well have unwittingly betrayed our fortress. She was kept in an improvised cage in the small sick bay. But the medico reported she did not protest imprisonment as she might have done normally. Instead she slept much of the time, rousing only to eat and drink. She did not resent his handling of her, but seemed happy and content. We all visited her, and speculation concerning the nature of what she was about to introduce among us was rife.

Ship time differs from planet time; we reckon it only artificially in days and nights because for so many centuries our species did live by sunrise and sunset and the flow of days. We were perhaps four weeks of such arbitrary time off the marsh planet when the medico broke into the off-watch rest cabin with the news that Valcyr had disappeared. In spite of his initial uneasiness, she had been so lethargic since we had upshipped that he had come to believe she would not fight confinement. Nor had she. But the fact remained that when he had taken her food and water, he had found the door swinging free and the occupant gone.

A ship’s interior is limited, and one would think that there would be few places where a cat, small as she was, could hide. But when we started a search from the control room down to the sealed cargo hatches and then, mentally accusing one another of having been careless, retraced the same way in pairs, even in threes, we found no trace of our quarry.

We were in the corridor outside the mess cabin when Chiswit and Stan, the junior engineer, both turned on the medico and accused him of doing away with Valcyr. Tempers were out of control by then and I had never realized how much the cat meant to these space voyagers until I heard the hot flow of anger in their tones. The medico denied their accusation just as vehemently, saying that he was well prepared to take measure for anything she might deliver, but that Valcyr would be safe. It was he who turned them all on me, snarling that I had allowed her to eat the stone in the first place, had even brought more of them on board.

What might have happened I do not know. But the Captain swung down the ladder and snapped orders. I was sent to my cabin, to remove temptation from his men, I suppose. And at that moment I was willing enough to go. In fact, when I closed the door behind me I thumbed the lock. For I had discovered in the last few minutes that that wild night of flight through Koonga City had left its mark - and that when I heard that note in the voices of the crewmen, I had instinctively reached for a weapon I did not wear.

I turned toward my bunk and froze. By the medico’s reckoning Valcyr was still some time from the moment when she was to solve the mystery. Yet she lay now on my bunk. Where had she been during the search? I had looked in here twice, the others at least once, yet now she lay there as if she had rested for hours. And she was licking again - a thing which lay limply by her side.

Though I was not familiar with kittens, I was sure that what Valcyr now cared for was not the normal young of her kind. It lay supine at its greatest length, head and tail outstretched. I could see the rise and fall of its side as it breathed with fast, fluttering breaths, so it was alive. But otherwise it looked dead. The body was covered with a black fuzz, close in appearance to the outward coating of the “stone.” This was wiry and did not yield much to Valcyr’s caressing tongue.

The neck was long, out of proportion, the head sharper of muzzle than seemed right, while the ears were only indicated by tiny upstanding tufts of hair. The legs were short, the tail again long, the underside and tip furless, rather as if it were covered with dark, tough skin. The paws, which it had drawn up and curled against its belly, were also furless, those in front resembling hands more than beast’s paws.

No, I did not believe it was a kitten. But it looked very helpless as it lay there panting. And Valcyr’s pride and concern for her strange child were very apparent. It was my duty to go and call the medico. But instead I sat down on the side of the bunk, leaving Valcyr good room, and watched her energetic washing of the changeling. What she had given birth to I could not guess, but somehow I thought it worth saving. And that was my first meeting with Eet.

FIVE

I found it increasingly hard to think of betraying Valcyr and her offspring to the crew. Because that was the feeling which I finally identified - that a disclosure of their presence would be a betrayal. And I who had never felt any strong emotion for an animal knew one now. I questioned myself, trying to discover why, and found no answer. But the fact remained that I could not call anyone, no more than if I were chained to the bunk, silenced by a gag.

The small creature stirred at last, raising its narrow head and turning it back and forth as if seeking something. But it did so blindly, for its eye slits were closed. Valcyr, purring, put out a foreleg and fondly drew it closer. But that head had swung around to face me, and I thought that, though the thing was so young, blind, and helpless, yet somehow it was aware of me, not in fear, but for a purpose. I tried to laugh at that.

Disturbed, I got up from the bunk and went to sit on a wall seat, my back half turned to those two. I strove to concentrate on my own difficulties. Since I could not hope now for an early release from the Vestris, or even be sure on which planet I would land, I must be prepared for a dubious future. Once more I ran my hand along my safe-belt, fingering each of the pitifully few bulges left in it. The last one of all - the space ring-

Hywel Jern had been killed for it; of that I was as certain as if I had witnessed the act. But- had our disaster on Tanth also stemmed from its possession? Why Vonder and not me, if that were true? Or was it necessary to make sure of us both, so that no awkward questions could later be raised by a survivor? Why-who-?

My father had had close ties with the Thieves’ Guild, in spite of his retirement from their company. Any man in those ranks could and did make powerful enemies. But, I believed, his services had continued in part even after his settlement on Angkor.

I continued to rub the ring’s shape through the stuff of the belt and my thoughts went round and round, presenting me with no solution. I do not know when it was that I had begun to notice an unusual degree of heat in the cabin. I had opened the sealing of my coverall, and felt the trickle of sweat drops down my cheek and chin. Now I raised my hand to swab those away and my eyes lit upon the skin across the back and fingers. Rising on that once-smooth surface were purplish blotches, swelling as might waterfilled blisters.

I tried to rise, only to discover that my body was no longer under my control. And I was shivering. The extreme heat of moments earlier was now an inner cold. I knew a tearing nausea, but I could not vomit. I clawed open my clothing and saw that the blisters were thick also across my chest and upper arms.

“Help-“ Had I croaked that, or only thought I had? Somehow I lurched up and pushed around the wall of the cabin, using its support to make my way to the small com on the wall. There I shook and wavered as I tried to press the alert button.

It was getting hard to see - in fact a thick fog curled up about me as if I were back in that world of geysers and steam. Had I been able to press the button? I leaned my forehead against the wall so that my lips were not too far from the com as I croaked my plea:

“Help- sick-“

I could no longer stay on my feet. Aiming myself at the bunk, I tottered forward, completely forgetting Valcyr. But as I crashed down I encountered no furry bodies. The bunk was empty and I lay on it shuddering.

Now I was back in the dank steam of the deserted planet, and that wreathed in scalding curls about me, so that I cried out in torment. Across seamed and stinking mud I ran, unable to sight my pursuers but knowing I was hunted. Once the mists parted and I saw them for an instant. They came laser in hand and all wore the same face, that of the medico Velos. But still I kept my stumbling feet and fled.

“They will kill- kill- kill-“ The words rang across this evil world in a vast thundering. “They will kill you- you- you!”

I was lying once more on my bunk, shivering again. But the mist had disappeared and my sight was clear. And not only my sight but my mind. There was a whistling whisper - it came from the wall - out of the wall. Once before I had heard words out of a wall or the air. But that had been on Tanth in the sanctuary. And I was not there - but in a cabin on a Free Trader. In me was a vast urgency, a need to hear more of that whispering.

As I pulled myself up my covering slipped away. I was no longer clothed and my body was covered with purple blotches which were dried in scabs. Hideous! I was lightheaded when I moved, but somehow I got to the wall and the com set there. The light below it was on - it was open - and somewhere in the ship people were talking, close enough to the mike so that some of their speech was broadcast, though slurred. I tried to hear

“-danger - seal up - cannot even space him - seal door - set down on moon - burn out the cabin-“

“-deliver him to-“

“No chance.” The first speaker must have moved closer, for I heard him more clearly. “He is dead, or near enough not to matter. We are lucky so far, and we can take no chance of the infection spreading. Get rid of the plague evidence before we planet on any port. Do you want to be proclaimed a plague ship?”

“-held responsible-“

“Return their fee. Show them the picture tape from the cabin; one look at that ought to convince them that he was of no use. As for searching him - do you want the plague?”

“-not people to be easily satisfied-“

“Show them the tapes!” It was the medico talking, I was sure now. “Do not even open that cabin again until we can burn it out, and we go suited when we do that. On a dead moon where the infection cannot spread. Then we keep our mouths shut, and tightly. No one but those will be asking for him. As far as the rest, he is still back on Tanth, or dead there. And there will be no questions asked for some time anyway - if ever. Those will see that his trail is muddled. We cannot deliver him now - we have a body and a sealed cabin - plague-“

That they were discussing me I had no doubts. Now that I was on my feet, the first giddiness had gone and I could think. Velos termed me dead, or near so, but at the moment I felt very much alive. And I had no mind to fall victim to the fate the speakers had in mind for me. If Velos had his way my cabin door would be welded closed from the outside, not to be opened again for fear of contagion. They would shut off the ventilation, all outlets, to confine the disease, and I would have a hard and lingering death. On the other hand it would appear that I had not engineered my own escape from Tanth. Why had I not been suspicious at how easily it had worked? I had been taken to be delivered elsewhere. And I nursed no doubts as to the nature of those to whom I would have been presented as if I were a piece of cargo.

What escape was left me?

“Outside-“

I turned my head too quickly and had to clutch at the frame of the bunk as my vertigo returned. There was a small dark patch there and it moved. I stared stupidly for a moment, until I could focus on it.

The creature I had last seen curled by Valcyr hunched beside my pillow. Now it seemed twice the size it had been at birth. Its eyes were well open and it looked at me intently. Seeing me stare in return, it reared its head, its long neck moving with reptilian sinuosity.

“Outside.” Again that word formed in my mind, and I could only connect it with the animal. Somehow in my weak state of health such communication did not make me wonder.

“Outside, where?” I asked in a whisper, and then squeezed around to shut off the com. I had no desire to reveal my partial recovery to any possible listener.

“That-was-well-done. Outside-the-ship-“ returned the thing backed against my rumpled pillow.

“That is open space-“ I continued to carry on the conversation, convinced now that it was part of my fever. Perhaps the other words I had heard over the mike were also fever dreams

“Not-so. You heard-they will kill-you. Smell their fear-it is a bad smell-all through this ship-“ The narrow head raised higher and higher and I saw the nostrils expand as if the creature were indeed scenting the unusual in the flat air. “Go outside-quick-before they seal-the door. Take a suit-“

Wear a space suit-through the lock? I might live then as long as the air in the suit lasted. But that would only prolong life for a short time.

“They will search-not find-then come back-hide-“ persisted my strange cabin mate.

A very wild plan with practically no chance of succeeding. But such is our clinging to life that I was ready to consider it. My cabin was not too far from the space lock, and the cubby storing the suits. On the other hand, the opening of that compartment would be instantly signaled to the bridge - and suppose we were in hyper-?

“Not so,” cut in my companion. “Feel-“

It was right. The hum of a ship in hyper was absent. Rather I felt the vibration of a ship cruising in normal space.

“They seek-moon-dead world-to hide plague-or perhaps to meet others.”

I pulled open a storage compartment. A coverall hung inside and I jerked it out, put it on. Wherever the fabric touched my scaling blotches they itched, but that was a minor discomfort when I had so much else to worry about. As I sealed the front opening, the creature on the bunk hunched together, quivered, leaped - landing on a small railed shelf level with my shoulder. I flinched and blinked.

Now that it was closer I could see it in detail. And it was indeed a weird mixture. Its fur was still the wiry black fuzz. The paws were naked skin. They were gray, white on the undersurfaces, and the fore ones were very like tiny hands. The head was reminiscent of a feline’s, as was the body, except the limbs were too short in comparison with the length of the frame. Stiff whiskers bristled from the upper lip, but the ears were smaller than a cat’s. The eyes were also out of proportion, being large and showing no pupils at all, only dark, slightly protruding orbs.

The whiplike tail was furred for its length in a ridge along the upper surface, but the tip and underparts were bare. Strange as it looked, it was not in any way repulsive, only different.

It stepped from the shelf to my body, settling itself around my neck, its hand-paws clinging to my right shoulder, so that its head was not far from my ear, its hind claws driven into the fabric over my upper left arm.

“Go-they come.”

It was as sharp as an order and I found myself obeying. But before I left the cabin I received one more instruction.

“The air duct-feel inside.”

The screen across it gave way easily to my first tug. I was so bemused now I followed instructions without question. Inside I found my safe-belt, which had been laid in the center of that tube, concealed from without. Automatically I searched its pockets by touch. My small resources were still mine.

“Quick!” That was reinforced with a sharp pinch from the hind claws.

I inched open the cabin door. The faint glow of the passage showed me it was empty. But I could hear the ring of boot plates on a ladder not too far away. I lurched for the suit locker. Suddenly it seemed my very thin chance was better than no chance at all!

The dreamlike quality of my actions continued to hold. I no longer, even with a small part of my brain, questioned the need to flee the interior of the ship, or whether any of this wild plan was feasible.

I regained a measure of strength and the more I walked the steadier I became. There was a fleeting satisfaction in disappointing Velos, who claimed I was dead or close to it.

The latch of the suit locker yielded to my tug and I slipped inside, pulling the door shut behind me. In one way I was favored, I saw as I glanced around that dim interior. The Vestris followed the general pattern of an exploring vessel - which was only logical, since a Free Trader often did discover new worlds.

There was another opening at the end of this space, giving entrance directly to the lock, saving time when one must suit or unsuit in leaving or entering the ship. I ran my hand along the rack of suits, striving to find one enough my size to be, if not comfortable, usable. Free Traders are now of a general physical type, slight of build. Had I not myself been thin and under height, I could not have squeezed into their protective covering. As it was, I was going to have a tight fit - a very tight one - so much so that I could not even buckle the safe-belt about my middle. Well, perhaps it could go over, if not under, the suit.

When we entered the locker my small companion swung down from its perch on my shoulders, and seemed almost to flow across the floor. It stopped before a clear-sided box and sat up on its haunches, using those hand-paws to feel along one edge in a way which argued intelligent purpose. Then the front of the box sprang open and it flashed in, to curl up. Mystified, I watched.

“Close this!” The imperative command ringing in my head brought me down on one knee, the suit making me clumsy.

I was not quite sure what the box was. Its clear front, metal sides and back were both protective and designed to give one visibility of the contents. There were hooks at the back, as if it were meant to hang from a support. I guessed that it had been fashioned to bring back specimens from a new-found world.

“Close it-hurry-they come! You will take me-so!”

The bright eyes turned up to mine, willing me. Yes, I could feel the force of the will. Again I obeyed.

My safe-belt could not be hooked over the suit. I hurriedly unsealed its pockets and shoveled their contents into a belt pouch - all save the space ring. That wide band of metal had once fitted over a space glove; perhaps it could again. And it did - snugly.

I strapped on the rest of the equipment, dimly aware of the suicidal folly of my plan. But the fact remained that were I to appear now anywhere in the ship I would probably be burned down without mercy. There is no fear quite like that of plague. With the carrying case containing my self-appointed company under my arm, I opened the door into the lock. My issuing out of the ship would activate alarms. But would they immediately believe that their quarry was seeking such a way out? Velos had reported me comotose. And I hoped they would cling to that thought.

The door of the hatch rolled back into place and I dogged it shut. Why not stay just where I was? Because there were inner controls and that door could still be opened from the corridor. They need only open it and beam a hole in my protective suit, then thrust me into space. A clean death as far as they were concerned, with little chance of my contaminating my slayers.

Even as I thought all this my hands were busy thumbing the release of the outer hatch, almost as if they worked independently of my orders. Then the warn light flashed and there was a rushing of air. I edged through, planting the magnetic plates of my boots on the surface skin of the ship.

I had traveled spacers for years. However, my acquaintance with such had been limited to the activities of a passenger. But now I had sense enough to keep my eyes on the ship under my feet, resolutely away from the void it sailed. I had fastened the box by a safety cord to my harness and that swung out, tugging at me, but not with force enough to break my magnetic hold on the ship.

Shuffling, not daring to break contact with the surface, I moved away from the hatch. I thought it would not be long before I was followed and the folly of what I had done struck me like a blow, breaking that dream state which had held me since the creature had first thrown its thoughts at my receptive mind.

If that was all real and not some fever dream, I had received telepathically those suggestions and orders. No man can laugh at the idea of esper powers, as the so-called enlightened once did. It has been established that they exist, but do so rarely, and erratically. However, I had never had any contact with such before, and was certain I had no “wild talent.”

“Move!” That order rang as sharply in my head as the first communication had done. “Move-toward the nose-“

For the first time since our association had begun, I balked. In fact I could not have moved in any direction at that moment. I was frozen in such wild terror as I had never believed a man could experience and not go mad. For I had lost all prudence and looked away from the ship under me, out and up.

Words hammered in my mind, but I did not understand them. I knew nothing, saw nothing but that emptiness. Something jerked and tore at my harness. The creature was plunging about in its box. I could see its mouth open and close, its eyes no longer shining beads but fiery and bright. But I watched it with detachment, the terror of space holding me fast.

But it was while I watched the creature’s frenzied movements inside that box that I also saw the closing of the hatch I had left open. And I think I screamed inside my helmet, the shrilling of my own voice deafening me. I was locked out here now, alone with nothingness!

Did I go a little mad? I am sure now that I did. I must get to the door, I must- I have no true recollection - did I hurl myself? What happened in those seconds of raw, mind-shattering panic? I have never known. But I was no longer rooted - the ship was there, and I was turning over and over, away from it, without any hope of aid - floating out into the eternal dark.

I think I fainted then - because there are blank spaces in my memory. True consciousness only returned with the sensation of being pulled, drawn. I had a moment or two of heartfelt relief. They had roped me, I was going back to the Vestris. Even if that meant I was going to certain death, I did not care. Quick death was an end to be sought in preference to this spinning in the void forever.

My shoulder, my arm, pain- a pulling pain which grew stronger. My right arm was stretched straight ahead of my body as if I pointed to some unseen goal. And on the glove blazed light, a light which fluctuated as if it were fed by energy which came in spurts. I followed that outstretched arm as a diver’s body follows his upheld, water-cutting arms, and there was the strong, sinew-tormenting pull, as if my aim had become a rope drawing me to an anchorage.

Nor could I move my arm, or even my legs. I was frozen into this position - a human arrow aimed for a target which I could not guess. That I was aimed I did not doubt. There was no rope on me- no, I was swinging through the void following that light on my glove. My glove? No! The space ring on my finger!

That once-clouded stone was the beacon of light pulling me on and on. I could turn my head a little and see in the reflected glory of that light that I still towed the box with its furry occupant. But the creature was curled in a tight ball which rolled helplessly and I thought it was probably dead.

Where the Vestris might be I had no idea. There was a sense of speed about my present passage. And I could not turn my head very far to see what lay behind, above, or below.

Time ceased to have any meaning. I wavered back and forth between consciousness and black non-being. Only gradually did I become aware of approaching something. At last I could make out the outline of what once might have been a ship; at least the inner portion of that drifting mass might have been a ship. About it, like tiny satellites about a planet, were crowding bits of debris, grinding now and then against the hull, swinging out, but not to break away. And the ring was pulling me straight into that grinding! Caught by even a small fragment of that and I would be as dead as if a laser had cut me down.

Yet try to fight the pull as I did, I had no chance against the force drawing me on. My arm was numb, the joints seemingly locked in that position. I had ceased to be a man; I was only a means for the ring to reach whatever target it must find.

Inside the suit, my helpless body, that which was the thinking, feeling part of me, cowered and whimpered. I shut my eyes, unable to look upon what lay before me, and then was forced to open them again because hope refused to die. We were very close to the outer circle of debris, and I thought I could see a hole in the side of the derelict ship - either an open hatch or some other break.

It was, as far as I could guess, since my sight of it was limited by the mass of stuff about it, larger than the Vestris, perhaps closer to passenger liner. And its lines were not those of any ship I knew. Then - we were in the first wave of debris-

I waited for the crushing of those bits of jagged metal - until I saw that the floating stuff was parting before the beam of the stone, as if that had the power to cut a clear path. Hardly daring to believe that such would be the case, I watched. But it was true, a great lump dipped and bobbed and moved reluctantly away.

So we came to that dark doorway. I was sure it was a hatch, though there remained no evidence of any door. But the opening was too regular to be a mere hole. Into and through that dark arch the ring continued to pull me, lighting up dim walls. And then my beacon hand struck painfully against a solid surface, and continued to beat through no desire of mine, hammering upon the inner hatch of this long-dead ship as if demanding entrance. Finally my gloved flesh came to rest on that resisting surface as if it were welded there, while I struggled until my magnetized boots struck the floor and I could stand, my right hand pinned to the door, my feet anchored once again.

SIX

There was such an overwhelming relief in being shut in, out of the void, that for a space that was all I felt - until the knowledge that I was now caught in another trap dispelled my only too short sensation of safety. My hand was still fast against the door and I could not pull it loose. Rather, it dragged me further and further forward, until my whole body was flat to that surface, almost as if the strength of the attraction could ooze me through the age-worn metal itself. And a second wave of fear arose in me at the thought that I would be held so for all time, trapped in this hatchway.

The glow from the stone was no longer so bright as it had been. In these confined quarters it would have been blinding had its brilliance shown as it had in space. But it was still flickering. I struggled wildly against the hold, until I wilted, exhausted, held upright by my hand against the door.

As I hung there, staring dully at the light, my hand, and the door, a fact broke through my bemusement. The flickering was now more deliberate. Almost it followed a pattern - on, off, on, off, with varying intervals between flashes. The suit was insulated, of course, but where the palm of my glove met the substance of the door, a reddish stain was spreading. Even through that insulation I could feel a tingle of concentrated energy.

Again I sensed I was only a thing to be used by the stone, that I was its tool and not it mine. The tingle became pain, and finally agony, with nothing I could do to ease it. The red stain brightened and at last I saw dark lines crack open. As the agony grew, the door began to give way. It fell in broken shards from the frame and I was pulled on.

I caught only glimpses of corridors, for it seemed that the stone now sped to make up for the time lost in defeating the barrier at the hatch: I was twice pulled past breaks in the hull.

My journey ended in a section where there were strange shapes of machines - or I believed them to be machines. And this part of the ship seemed intact, undamaged by whatever had struck to finish its life. The stone whisked me around and through a maze of rods, cylinders, latticework, piping, coming at last to a box wherein I could see a tray. And set on that were black lumps. With a last spurt the stone once more plastered my hand to the viewplate of the box. It flared in a burst of dazzling light. And behind the plate I saw a small answering flicker from one of those lumps. But it was only a flicker and quickly gone. Then the glow of the stone died, too, and my hand fell limply to swing by my side, a dead weight. I was alone in the dark bowels of a long-dead ship.

I collapsed, to float, and then felt the bump of the box in which my companion traveled. How much air I had left in my suit tank I did not know, but I doubted whether it was enough to keep me living long. The stone had clearly led me to my death, not in a void where I would have spun forever, but in this tomb of blasted metal.

There is the ancient fear of my species of the dark and what may creep therein. I raised my left hand and fumbled with the button on the fore of my harness until the sharp ray of a beamer glowed, picking out the case of lumps which might once have been stones to rival that in the ring. There was, of course, no hope that I could find any compartment with air remaining, or any form of escape. But neither would I stay supine where I was, just waiting for suffocation to finish me.

My right arm was still useless. I took that hand with my left and wedged it into the front of my harness, keeping it across my chest. I would have cast off the box with the dead creature, only, when I looked down at that tightly curled body, to my vast amazement, I saw the head move, caught the gleam of eyes. So it had also survived our voyage to the derelict!

The magnetic plates on my boots allowed me to walk along the deck, though the slow spin of the ship made the deck become wall, or even ceiling. Finally I loosed the plates and pulled along by handholds.

All ships of my own time carried lifeboats, with directional finders which would locate the nearest planetary body and would then direct the boat there - though there was always a chance the survivors might be landed on a world inhospitable to human life. Perhaps this ship had a similar arrangement for the safety of passengers and crew. If so - and I could find one - though they might have all been used when the ship was first abandoned - I might still have a thin chance.

It is the nature of my species that we find it necessary to keep fighting for life until a last blow ends us. That inborn instinct drove me now.

The stone, I deduced, had brought me to the engine section of the ship. Whatever empowered it in space and acted as a homing device had drawn it straight to those burned-out bits in the box, once, perhaps, the motive power for the ship.

I pulled myself through the remains of the engine room. There might, I thought, be other energy sources in the lifeboats. They should be several decks higher, close to the crew and passenger quarters - always supposing this ship duplicated the general layout of those I knew.

I found no ladders, only wells which were cut through the levels. There were hints here and there that this vessel had never housed beings of my type. At the foot of the second well I hesitated. The ship rolled lazily; I might float through one of these - only my beamer showed no handholds to pull me along, and to be sucked in and then spin helplessly- At last I used my boot plates, walking up along walls which moved ever to make my head swim and induce a return of the vertigo which had been a symptom of my illness.

The next level had cabins, most of their doors open. I peered into one or two. There were shelves which might have been bunks, save that they were very short and narrow, and they were so uniform in the interior design I thought this must have been crew territory.

Once more I made a spin walk to the next level There had been a carpet on the floor here and the cabins were larger. My beam illuminated a splash of color on the wall, focused on a picture or mural - queerly disjointed figures or objects, which my eyes could not follow, colors which hurt. Passenger territory. Now - along here I should find LB hatches.

There was something floating against the wall of the corridor. It seemed to lurch at me and I fended it off with aversion, refusing to look closely. Passenger or crewman, here was one who had not reached any LB. My touch sent it swirling back and away.

I had begun to think I was wrong in my hopes when I came to the first port and looked through its door into an empty socket. The LB had been launched, which meant live passengers had reached it. Some had escaped that long-ago wreck. And though the port was empty, it raised my flagging hopes.

The dial on my air tank had swung far toward red. I glanced at it once and then swiftly away. Better not to know how near I was to the end. Even were I able to find a usable LB and launch it, bow long would it be before I reached, a planet? If and if and if again-

Suddenly the numb arm across my breast twitched and pulled against the confining strap. I looked down. The stone shone. Was it answering once more a call from an installation similar to the one I had found in the engine room?

Though the pull tugged at my secured arm, it was not enough to jerk it free of the fastening. But it did provide a guide along this corridor. Past two more empty berths I traveled. Then my arm gave a hard jerk, which did tear it loose and bring its dead weight around to point to a surface now almost under me as the ship rolled. There was another hatch to an LB berth - but it was closed. Perhaps no one had reached it.

Again my glove went to that door, anchored me, and the light from the stone flared. But this time it did not burn through. The hatch cover rolled aside and I saw the projectile shape of an LB. Once more my arm dropped, but I pulled myself along with my left hand, pried at the hatch of the LB. It gave and I fell into its interior, bringing the box of the creature with me.

There was a flickering of light, not only from the stone, but on a panel at the nose end of the LB. There were hammock-like slings to take the bodies of passengers and one was close enough for me to clutch. I could feel a vibration through the small cabin. Whatever energized this LB was not dead - the thing had at least enough power to cruise out of its sling inside the skin of the parent ship. We shot forth with enough force to pin me down, and I blacked out.

“Air-“

I looked blearily about. The beamer still shown, now straight against a curving wall, to be reflected back dazzlingly into my eyes. Suddenly I realized that I was breathing in shuddering gasps, coughing a little. For the air I fought to draw into my lungs had a strange odor which irritated my nasal passages. On my shoulder was a furry burden, and a whiskered face was thrust close to mine, dark beads of eyes watching me intently.

“Air it is,” I answered dreamily. More and more this had the cast of a weird nightmare. Logical, perhaps, after a fashion which nightmares seldom are, but certainly not believable. For now, however, I was content to lie half entangled in the hammock, rapidly breathing that disagreeable air.

When I turned my head a fraction I could see a board of controls. The numerous lights which had played so swiftly across it at my first entrance now were cut to three - one yellowwhite, in the center and a little above the other two, one red, and the other a ghostly blue. I looked down at my hand. There was still a glint of light in the stone, showing beneath the clouded surface, and a faint tingling prickled in my hand.

At least I was still alive, I was free of the dead ship in an LB, and I had air to breathe even if it was not the air my lungs craved. It would seem my entrance into the projectile had activated its ancient mechanism.

If we were on course for the nearest planet, how long a voyage did we face? And what kind of a landing might we have to endure? I could breathe, but I would need food and water. There might be supplies - E-rations - on board. But could they still be used after all these years - or could a human body be nourished by them?

With my teeth I twisted free the latch which fastened my left glove, scraped that off, and freed my hand. Then I felt along my harness. These suits were meant to be worn planetside as well as for space repairs; they must have a supply of E-rations. My fingers fumbled over some loops of tools and found a seam-sealed pouch. It took me a few moments to pick that open.

I had not felt hunger before; now it was a pain devouring me. I brought the tube I had found up to eye level. It was more than I could manage to sit up or even raise my head higher, but the familiar markings on the tube were heartening. One moment to insert the end between my teeth, bite through, and then the semiliquid contents flooded my mouth and I swallowed greedily. I was close to the end of that bounty when I felt movement against my bared throat and remembered I was not alone.

It took a great deal of resolution to pinch tight that tube and hold it to the muzzle of the furred one. Its pointed teeth seized upon the container with the same avidity I must have shown, and I squeezed the tube slowly while it sucked with a vigor I could feel through the touching of its small body to mine.

There were three more tubes in my belt pouch. Each one, I knew, was intended to provide a day’s rations, perhaps two if a man were hard pushed. Four days - maybe, we could stretch that to eight. But the gamble was such as no sane man would have taken by choice.

I lay quietly until my strength began to return. The leaden weight of my right arm tingled a little, not from the action of the stone, but as if circulation returned. With that came a painful cramping. I forced myself to flex my fingers inside the glove, to raise and lower my forearm, setting my teeth against the hurt those exercises caused me.

In time my arm obeyed me as well as it had before the stone had taken over. I pulled myself up into a sitting position and gazed about the LB. There were six of the hammock slings, three on each wall, and I lay in the last to the right. None of them had been placed close enough to the control board for the occupant to reach it. This was true also of the regulation escape boats I knew. Their course tapes were set, so that if a badly injured man managed to reach one of them, it would serve without need for human manipulation.

Like the bunks I had seen in the ship, these hammocks, gauging by their size, were not intended for the human frame. And certainly the air still rasping my nose and lungs was not normal. I wondered briefly if it held some poisonous element which would in time finish me. But if that were true there was nothing I could do about it.

On the wall I traced outlines which I thought marked storage compartments. Whether E-rations lay behind those still- The dreamy state continued to hold me. Though my strength returned to my body; it was as if I watched all this from a distance and nothing really mattered. Once I raised my hand to look at it. Those dark patches which had been the purple, swollen blisters, and then scaling scabs, had rubbed off their rough surfaces inside the glove. The skin beneath was shiny pink and new.

Again the furred body moved and I felt the wiry hair rasp against my neck. Then my companion moved out, crawling down my body, reaching out a hand-paw to catch at the webbing of the next hammock. It was a long space to span, and at last the creature dug the claws of its hind legs into the stuff of my suit, lunged forward, and so was just able to grasp the edge of the web. With sinuous dexterity it took firm hold and swung over to its new position.

The hammock served it as a ladder and it climbed agilely to one of the outlined lockers. Holding with a left forepaw and both hind legs to its swaying anchorage, it ran the other set of small gray fingers over the surface. When it pressed or released, I could not tell, but a panel swung open with such speed that the creature had to duck to escape.

Behind were two tubes secured in a rack. Each had something vaguely resembling a laser grip, and I thought they might be weapons - or perhaps survival tools. Leaving that door aswing, the creature went methodically to the next. I was a little troubled as I watched it.

Even after our communication I had continued to think of my companion as an animal. It was clearly the offspring of Valcyr, strange though its begetting had been. I had heard of mutant animals able to communicate with man. But now it was brought home to me that whatever this creature was, it had intelligence above the level I had assigned it. And now I asked, my voice overloud in the small cabin:

“Who are you?”

Perhaps it would have been better to ask, “What are you?”

It paused, its forepaw still outstretched, its long neck twisting so that it could look straight at me. And for the first time I remembered I had awakened without my helmet, with the air reviving me. Surely I had not taken it off while unconscious - so -

“Eet. “

A single word with a queer sound - if a word in one’s mind may also register as a sound.

“Eet,” I repeated aloud. “Do you mean you are Eet as I am Murdoc Jern, or Eet as I am a man?”

“I am Eet, myself, me-“ If it understood my division of terms it was not interested. “I am Eet, returned-“