Uncharted Stars (18 page)

But our silence was broken at last by a clatter from the control board and I knew our radar had picked up a moving object. The tiny visa-screen gave us a ship heading purposefully for the station. Eet glanced over his shoulder and I thought he was looking at me for orders. The mutant was not accustomed, once a matter had been decided, to wait for permission or agreement. I found myself nodding my head, and his fingers made the necessary adjustments to bring us behind that other ship, a little under its bulk where we might apply that weak traction beam without being sighted, or so we hoped.

The size of the newcomer was in our favor. I had expected something such as a scout ship, or certainly not larger than the smallest Free Trader. But this was a bulk-cargo vessel, of the smallest class, to be sure, but still of a size to be considered only a wallowing second-rate transfer ship.

Our traction beam centered and held, drawing us under the belly of the bigger vessel, which overhung us, if anyone had been out in space to see, as a covering shadow. We waited tensely for some sign that those in the other ship might be alarmed. But as long moments slipped by we breathed more freely, reassured by so much, though it was very little.

However, on the visa-screen what we picked up now was not the ship, but what lay ahead. For additional safety Eet had snapped on the distort beam and through that we could see just a little of the amazing port we neared.

Whatever formed its original core—an asteroid, a moon, an ancient space station—could not be distinguished now. What remained was a mass of ships, derelicts declared so by their broken sides, their general decrepit appearances. They were massed, jammed tightly together into an irregular ovoid except in one place directly before us, where there was a dark gap, into which the ship controlling our path was now headed.

“Looted ships—” I hazarded, ready to believe now in every wild story of Waystar. Pirates had dragged in victim ships to help form their hiding place—though why any such labor was necessary I could not guess. Then I saw—and felt—the faint vibration of a defense screen. The LB shuddered but it did not break linkage with the ship. Then we were through without any attack.

As the wall of those crumpled and broken ships funneled about us, I foresaw a new danger, that we might be scraped or caught by the wreckage, for that space down which we were being towed narrowed the farther we advanced.

Also, though the ships had seemed tightly massed at first sight, this proved not to be so upon closer inspection. There were evidences that they had been intended as an enveloping cover for whatever core lay at the heart. There were girders and patches of skin welded together, anchoring one wreck to another. But it was a loose unity and there were spaces in between, some large enough to hold the LB.

Seeing those, and calculating that we might come to grief ahead were the passage to narrow to the point where only the cargo ship might wedge through, I decided one gamble was better than another.

“Wedge in here”—I made this more a suggestion than an order—“then suit up and go through?”

“Perhaps that is best,” Eet answered. However, I suddenly remembered that though I might suit up, there was no protective covering on board which would take Eet's smaller body.

“The disaster bag,” Eet reminded me as his hands moved to loose our tie with the bulk of ship overhead.

Of course, the baglike covering intended to serve a seriously injured escapee using the LB, one whose hurt body could not be suited up if the emergency landing had been made on a planet with a hostile atmosphere and it was necessary to leave the boat. I unstrapped, and opened the cupboard where the suit lay at full length. The disaster bag was in tight folds beside its booted feet. Passage in that would leave Eet helpless, wholly dependent on me, but there was hope it would not be for long.

He was busy at the controls, turning the nose of the LB to the left, pointing it into one of those hollows in the mass of wreckage. The impetus left us by the pull of the ship sufficed to give us forward movement, and two girders welded just above the hole we had chosen held the pieces of wreckage forming its walls steady. There was a bump as we scraped in, and another, moments later, as the nose of the LB rammed against some obstacle. We could only hope that the crevice had swallowed us entirely and that our tail was not sticking betrayingly into the ship passage.

I suited up as fast as I could, wanting to make sure of that fact—though what we could do to remedy matters if that had happened I did not have the slightest idea. Then I hauled out the disaster bag and Eet climbed in so that I could make the various sealings tight and inflate its air supply. Since it was made for a man he had ample room, in fact moved about in it in the manner of one swimming in a very limited pool, for there was no gravity in this place and we were in free fall.

Activating the exit port, I crawled out with great care, fearing more than I wanted to admit some raw edge which could piece the protecting fabric of the suit or Eet's bag. But there was space enough to wriggle down the length of the LB, mostly by feel, for I dared not flash a beamer here.

Fortune had served us so far. The tail of the LB was well within the hole. And I had to hitch and pull, the weight of Eet dragging me back, by grasping one piece of wreckage and then the next for several lengths until I was in the main passage.

There was a weak light here, though I could not see its source, enough to take me from one handhold to the next, boring into the unknown. I made that journey with what speed I could, always haunted by the fear that another ship might be coming in or going out and I would be caught and ground against the wreckage.

The band of murdered ships ended suddenly in a clear space, a space which held other ships—three I could see. One was the cargo ship which had brought us in, another was one of those needle-nosed, deadly raiders I had seen used by the Guild, and the third was plainly a yacht. They were in orbit around what was the core of this whole amazing world in space. And it was a station, oval in shape like the protecting mass of wreckage, with landing stages at either end. Its covering was opaque, but with a crystalline look to the outer surface, which was pitted and pocked and had obviously been mended time and time again with substances that did not match the original material.

The cargo ship had opened a hatch and swung out a robo-carrier, heavily laden. I held on to my last anchorage and watched the robo spurt into a landing on a stage. The top half carrying the cargo dropped off and moved into an open hatch of the station while the robo took off for another load. There was no suited overseer to be seen, just robos. And I thought I saw a chance to make use of them to reach the station, just as we had used the robos to leave the caravansary.

Only I was not to have an opportunity to try. Out of nowhere came a beam, the force of which plastered me as tightly to the wreckage at my back as if my suit had indeed been welded in eternal bondage.

There was no breaking that hold. And my captors were very tardy about coming to collect me, finally spurting from the hatch of the yacht on a mini air sled. They lashed me into a tangle cord and used it as a drag to pull me behind them, not back to the ship from which they had issued, but to the landing stage where the robo had set down. Then, dismounting from their narrow craft, they tugged us both through a lock and into the interior of the station, where a weak gravity brought my boots and Eet's relaxed body to the floor.

Those who had taken me prisoner were humanoid, perhaps even of Terran breed, for they had that look. They snapped up their helmets and one did the same for me, letting in breathable air, though it had that peculiar faint odor of reprocessed oxygen. Leaving the tangle about my arms, they loosed me enough to walk, pointing with a laser to enforce my going. One of them took the bag from me and towed Eet, turning now and then to study the mutant narrowly.

So it was as prisoners that we came to the legendary Waystar, and it was an amazing place. The center was open, a diffused light filling it, a greenish light which gave an unpleasant sheen to most of the faces passing. By some unknown means there was a light gravity giving a true up and down to the corridors and balconies opening on that center. I caught sight of what could be labs, passed other doors tightly shut. There was population enough to equal that of a village on an ordinary planet—though, as I guessed, those who used the station as home base were often in space and the permanent dwellers were limited in number.

It was one of the latter I was taken before. He was an Orbsleon, his barrel bulk immersed in a bowl chair with the pink fluid he needed for constant nourishment washing about his wrinkled shoulders, his boneless upper tentacles floating just beneath its surface. His head was very broad in the lower part, dwindling toward a top in which two eyes were set far apart, well to the sides. His far-off ancestor of the squid clan was still recognizable in this descendant. But that alien body housed a very shrewd and keen intelligence. A Veep in Waystar would be a Veep indeed, no matter what form of body held him.

A tentacle tip flashed from the bowl chair to trigger keys on a Basic talker, for the Orbsleon was a tactile communicator.

“You are who?”

“Hywel Jern.” I gave him an answer as terse as his question.

Whether that name meant anything to him I had no way of knowing. And I received no aid from Eet. For the first time I doubted that the mutant could carry some of the burden of my impersonation. It might well be that the alien thought process would prove, in some cases, beyond his reading. Then I would be in danger. Was this such a time?

“You came—how?” The tentacle tip played out that question.

“On a one-man ship. I crashed on a moon—took an LB—” I had my story ready. I could only hope it sounded plausible.

“How through?” There was of course no readable expression on the alien's face.

“I saw a cargo ship coming in, hung under it. The LB played out halfway through the passage. Had to suit up and come along—”

“Why come?”

“I am a hunted man. I was Veep Estampha's value expert, I thought to buy out, live in peace. But the Patrol were after me. They sent a man on contract when they could not take me legally. He left me for dead. I have been on the run ever since.” So thin a tale it might hold only if I were recognized as Hywel Jern. Now that I was well into this I realized more and more my utter folly.

Suddenly Eet spoke to me. “They have sent for one who knew Jern. Also they did not register ‘dead' when you gave your name.”

“What do here?” my questioner went on.

“I am an appraiser. There is perhaps need for one here. Also—this is the one place the Patrol is not likely to take me.” I kept as bold a front as I could.

A man came in at the slow and rather stately pace the low gravity required. To my knowledge I had not seen him before. He was one of the mutants of Terran stock having the colorless white hair and goggle protected eyes of a Faltharian. Those goggles made his expression hard to read. But Eet was ready.

“He did not know your father well, but had seen him several times in Veep Estampha's quarters. Once he brought him a Forerunner piece, a plaque of irridium set with bes rock. Your father quoted him a price of three hundred credits but he did not want to sell.”

“I know you,” I said swiftly as Eet's mind read that for me. “You had a piece of Forerunner loot—irridium with bes setting—”

“That is the truth.” He spoke Basic with a faint lisp. “I sold it to you.”

“Not so! I offered three hundred, you thought you could do better. Did you?”

He did not answer me. Rather his goggled head swung toward the Orbsleon. “He looks like Hywel Jern, he knows what Jern would know.”

“Something—you do not like?” queried the tentacles on the keys.

“He is younger—”

I managed what I hoped would register as a superior smile. “A man on the run may not have time or credits enough for a plasta face change, but he can take rejub tablets.”

The Faltharian did not reply at once. I wished I could see the whole of his face without those masking goggles. Then, almost reluctantly, he did answer.

“It could be so.”

During all those moments the Orbsleon's gaze had held on me. I did not see his small eyes blink; perhaps they did not. Then he played the keys of the talker again.

“You appraiser, maybe use. Stay.”

With that, not sure whether I was a prisoner or perhaps now an employee, I was marched out of the room and led to a cubby on a lower level, where Eet and I, having been searched for weapons and had the suit and bag taken from us, were left alone. I tried the door and was not surprised to find it sealed. We were prisoners, but to what degree I could not be sure.

XII

What I needed most at that moment was sleep. Life in space is always lived to an artificial timetable which has little relationship to sun or moon, night or day, in the measured time of planets. In hyper, when there is little to do for the smooth running of the ship, one simply sleeps when tired, eats when hungry, so that regular measurement of time does not apply. I did not know really how long it had been since I had had a meal or slept. But now sleep and hunger warred in me.

The room in which we had been so summarily stowed was a very small one, having little in the way of furnishings. And what there was resembled that planned for the economy of space, such as is found in a ship. There was a pull-down bunk, snapped up into a fold in the wall when not in use, a fresher, into which I would have to pack myself, when needful, with some care, and a food slot. On the off chance that it might be running, I whirled the single dial above it (there seemed to be no choice of menu). And somewhat to my surprise, the warn lights in the panel snapped on and the front flipped open to display a covered ration dish and a sealed container of liquid.

It would appear that the inhabitants of Waystar were on tight rations, or else they believed that uninvited guests were entitled only to the bare minumum of sustenance. For what I uncovered were truly space rations, nutritious and sustaining, to be sure, but practically tasteless—intended to keep a man alive, not in any way to please his taste buds.