Uncharted Stars (15 page)

“Easy enough.” He leaped to squat behind the controls, starting the machine, though it still complained noisily.

We reached the LB without picking up any sign that the raiders had lingered here or that there were any other survivors of the archaeological party. Getting the Zacathan into the hammock of the craft was an exhausting job. But I did it at last and flipped the automatic return which would take us to the
Wendwind
.

With Ryzk's help I carried the wounded survivor to one of the lower cabins. The pilot surveyed my improvised treatment closely and at last nodded.

“Best we can do for him. These boys are tough. They walk away from crashes that would pulp one of us. What happened down there?”

I described what I had found—the opened tomb, the wreckage of the camp.

“They must have made a real find. Now there's something worth more than all your gem hunting, even if you made a major strike! Forerunner stuff—must have been,” Ryzk said eagerly.

The Zacathans are the historians of the galaxy. Being exceptionally long-lived by our accounting of planet years, they have a bent for the keeping of records, the searching out of the source of legends and the archaeological support for such legends. They knew of several star-wide empires which had risen and fallen again before they themselves had come into space. But there were others about whom even the Zacathans knew very little, for the dust of time had buried deep all but the faintest hints.

When we Terrans first came into the star lanes we were young compared to many worlds. We found ruins, degenerate races close to extinction, traces over and over again of those who had proceeded us, risen to heights we had not yet dreamed of seeking, then crashed suddenly or withered slowly away. The Forerunners, the first explorers had called them. But there were many Forerunners, not just of one empire or species, and those Forerunners had Forerunners until the very thought of such lost ages could make a man's head whirl.

But Forerunner artifacts were indeed finds to make a man wealthy beyond everyday reckoning. My father had shown me a few pieces, bracelets of dark metal meant to fit arms which were not of human shape, odds and ends. He had treasured these, speculated about them, until all such interest had centered upon the zero stone. Zero stone—I had seen the ruins with the caches of these stones. Had there been any in this tomb which the Zacathans had explored? Or was this merely another branch of limitless history, having no connection with the Forerunner who had used the stones as sources of fantastic energy?

“The Jacks have it all now anyway,” I observed. We had rescued a Zacathan who might well die before we could get him to any outpost of galactic civilization, that was all.

“We did not miss them by too much,” Ryzk said. “A ship just took off from the south island—caught it on radar as it cut atmosphere.”

So they might have set down there and used a flitter to carry out the raid—which meant they had either scouted the camp carefully or had a straight tip about it. Then what Ryzk had said reached my inner alarms.

“You picked them up—could they have picked us up in return?”

“If they were looking. Maybe they thought we were a supply ship and that's why they cut out so fast. In any case, they will not be coming back if they have what they wanted.”

No, they would be too anxious to get their loot into safe hiding. Zacathans, armed with telepathic powers, did not make good enemies, and I thought that the Jacks who had pulled this raid must be very sure of a safe hiding place at some point far from any port or they would not have attempted it at all.

“Makes you think of Waystar,” commented Ryzk. “Sort of job those pirates would pull.”

A year earlier I would have thought Ryzk subscribing to a legend, one of the tall tales of space. But my own experience, when Eet had informed me that the Free Traders who had taken me off Tanth, apparently to save my life after Vondar's murder, had intended to deliver me at Waystar, had given credibility to the story. At least the crew of that Free Trader had believed in the port to which I had been secretly consigned.

But Ryzk's casual mention of it suddenly awoke my suspicions. I had had that near-fatal brush with one Free Trader crew who had operated on the shady fringe of the Guild. Could I now have taken on board a pilot who was also too knowing of the hidden criminal base? And was Ryzk—had he been planted?

It was Eet who saved me from speculation and suspicion which might have been crippling then.

“No. He is not what you fear. He knows of Waystar through report only.”

“He”—I indicated the unconscious Zacathan—“might just as well write off his find then.”

My try at re-establishing our credit had failed, unless the Zacathan lived long enough for us to get him to some port. Then perhaps the gratitude of his House might work in my favor. Perhaps a cold-blooded measuring of assistance to a fellow intelligent being. Only I was so ridden by my ever-present burden of worry that it was very much a part of my thinking—though I would not have deserted any living thing found in that plundered camp.

I appealed to Ryzk for the co-ordinates to the nearest port. But, though he searched through the computer for any clue as to where we were, he finally could only suggest return to Lylestane. We were off any chart he knew of and to try an unreckoned jump through hyper was a chance no one took, except a First-in Scout as part of his usual duty.

But we did not decide the matter, for as we were arguing it out Eet broke into our dispute to say that our passenger had regained consciousness.

“Leave it up to him,” I said. “The Zacathans must have co-ordinates from some world to reach here. And if he can remember those, we can return him to his home base. Best all around—”

However, I was not at all sure that the alien, as badly wounded as he was, could guide us. Yet a return to Lylestane was for me a retracing of a way which might well lead to more and more trouble. If he died and we turned up with only his body on board, who would believe our story of the Jacked camp? It could be said that we had been responsible for the raid. My thinking was beoming more and more torturous the deeper I went into the muddle. It seemed that nothing had really gone right for me since I had taken the zero stone from its hiding place in my father's room, that each move I made, always hoping for the best, simply pushed me deeper into trouble.

Eet flashed down the ladder at a greater speed than we could make. And we found him settled by the head of the bed we had improvised for the wounded alien. The latter had his bandaged head turned a little, was watching the mutant with his one good eye. That they were conversing telepathically was clear. But their mental wave length was not mine, and when I tried to listen in, the sensation was like that of hearing a muttering of voices at the far side of the room, a low sound which did not split into meaning.

As I came from behind Eet the Zacathan looked up, his eye meeting mine.

“Zilwrich thanks you, Murdoc Jern.” His thoughts had a sonorous dignity. “The little one tells me that you have the mind-touch. How is it that you came before the last flutters of my life were done?”

I answered him aloud so Ryzk could also understand, telling in as few words as possible about our overhearing of the Jack plot, and why and how we had come to the amber world.

“It is well for me that you did so, but ill for my comrades that it was not sooner.” He, too, spoke Basic now. “You are right that it was a raid for the treasures we found within a tomb. It is a very rich find and a remainder of a civilization not heretofore charted. So it is worth far more than just the value of the pieces—it is worth knowledge!” And he provided that last word with such emphasis as I might accord a flawless gem. “They will sell the treasure to those collectors who value things enough to hide them for just their own delight. And the knowledge will be lost!”

“You know where they take it?” Eet asked.

“To Waystar. So it would seem that that is not a legend after all. They have one there who will buy it from them, as has been done twice lately with such loot. We have tried to find who has betrayed our work to these stit beetles, but as yet we have no knowledge. Where do you take me now?” He changed the subject with an abrupt demand.

“We have no co-ordinates from here except those for return to Lylestane. We can take you there.”

“Not so!” His denial was sharp. “To do that would be to lose important time. I am hurt in body, that is true, but the body mends when the will is bent to its aid. I must not lose this trail—”

“They blasted into hyper. We cannot track them.” Ryzk shook his head. “And the site of Waystar is the best-guarded secret in the galaxy.”

“A mind may be blocked where there is fear of losing such a secret. But a blocked mind is also locked against needful use,” returned Zilwrich. “There was one among those eaters of dung who came at the last to look about, see that nothing of value was left. His mind held what we must know—the path to Waystar.”

“Oh, no!” I read enough of the thought behind his words to deny what he suggested at once. “Maybe the Fleet could blast their way in there. We cannot.”

“We need not blast,” corrected Zilwrich. “And the time spent on the way will be used to make our plans.”

I stood up. “Give us the co-ordinates of your base world. We will set you down there and you can contact the Patrol. This is an operation for them.”

“It is anything but a Patrol operation,” he countered. “They would make it a Fleet matter, blast to bits any opposition. And how much would then be left of the treasure? One man, two, three, four”—he could not move his head far but somehow it was as if he had pointed to each of us in turn—“can go with more skill than an army. I shall give you only those co-ordinates.”

I had opened my mouth for a firm refusal when Eet's command rang in my head. “Agree! There is an excellent reason.”

And, in spite of myself, in spite of knowing that no excellent reason for such stupidity could exist, I found myself agreeing.

X

It was so wild a scheme that I suspected the Zacathan of exerting some mental influence to achieve his ends—though such an act was totally foreign to all I had ever heard of his species. And since we were committed to this folly, we would have to make plans within the framework of it. We dared not go blindly into the unknown.

To my astonishment, Ryzk appeared to accept our destination with equanimity, as if our dash into a dragon's mouth was the most natural thing in the world. But I held a session in which we pooled what we knew of Waystar. Since most was only legend and space tales, it would be of little value, a statement I made gloomily.

But Zilwrich differed. “We Zacathans are sifters of legends, and we have discovered many times that there are rich kernels of truth hidden at their cores. The tale of Waystar has existed for generations of your time, Murdoc Jern, and for two generations of ours—”

“That—that means it antedates our coming into space!” Ryzk interrupted. “But—”

“Why not?” asked the Zacathan. “There have always been those outside the law. Do you think your species alone invented raiding, crime, piracy? Do not congratulate or shame yourselves that this is so. Star empires in plenty have risen and fallen and always they had those who set their own wills and desires, lusts and envies, against the common good. It is perfectly possible that Waystar has long been a hide-out for such, and was rediscovered by some of your kind fleeing the law, who thereafter put it to the same use. Do you know those co-ordinates?” he asked Ryzk.

The pilot shook his head. “They are off any trade lane. In a ‘dead' sector.”

“And what better place—in a sector where only dead worlds spin about burned-out suns? A place which is avoided, since there is no life to attract it, no trade, no worlds on which living things can move without cumbersome protection which makes life a burden.”

“One of those worlds could be Waystar?” I hazarded.

“No. The legend is too plain. Waystar is space-borne. Perhaps it was even once a space station, set up eons ago when the dead worlds lived and bore men who reached for the stars. If so, it has been in existence longer than our records, for those worlds have always been dead to us.”

He had given us a conception of time so vast we could not measure it. Ryzk frowned.

“No station could go on functioning, even on atomics—”

“Do not be too sure even of that,” Zilwrich told him. “Some of the Forerunners had machines beyond our comprehension. You have certainly heard of the Caverns of Arzor and of that Sargasso planet of Limbo where a device intended for war and left running continued to pull ships to crash on its surface for thousands of years. It is not beyond all reckoning that a space station devised by such aliens would continue to function. But also it could have been converted, by desperate men. And those criminals would thus have a possession of great value, if they could continue to hold it—something worth selling—”

“Safety!” I cut in. Though Waystar was not entirely Guild, yet surely the Guild had some ties there.

“Just so,” agreed Eet. “Safety. And if they believe they have utter safety there we may be sure of two things. One, that they do have some defenses which would hold perhaps even against Fleet action, for they cannot think that the situation of their hole would never be discovered. Second, that having been so long in the state of safety, they might relax strict vigilance.”

But before Eet had finished, Ryzk shook his head. “We had better believe the former. If anyone not of their kind had gotten in and out again, we would know it. A story like that would sweep the lanes. They have defenses which really work.”

I called on imagination. Persona detectors, perhaps locked, not to any one personality, but rather to a state of mind, so that any invader could pass only if he were a criminal or there on business. The Guild was rumored to buy or otherwise acquire inventions which the general public did not know existed. Then they either suppressed them or exploited them with care. No, such a persona detector might be possible.