Uncharted Stars (24 page)

“It is a map, and you hunt the treasure you believe lies at its end?”

“More than such treasure as you found in the tomb.” And, as tersely as I could, I told him the story of the zero stones—the one in my father's ring, those of the caches on the unknown planet, that which Eet had secreted, and how we had used it since.

“I see. Take this then.” Zilwrich held out the bowl. “Find your hidden stone. It would seem that we were on the edge of a vast discovery when we uncovered this—but one which would unleash perils such as a man thinks twice about loosing.”

I held the bowl to me as I had held Eet, using my shoulder against the wall to keep erect, shambling from Zilwrich's cabin to the ladder, down which I fell rather than climbed, to reach the LB's berth. The last steps of that journey were such a drain that I could hardly take them.

Then I was back in the craft which had served us so well. I fought to keep moving, holding the bowl a little away from ne now, watching the zero stone. It glimmered and then broke into vivid life. But it was hard to see how I could use it as a guide, since there seemed no variation in that light. However, I must try.

I moved jerkily, first to the tail, without any change I could detect in the degree of emanation from the bowl stone. But as I came up the right side of the small ship on return the bowl moved in my grasp, fought my hold. I released it. As the zero stone, on its first awakening, had pulled me across space to the derelict ship where others of its kind lay, so did the bowl cross, to hang suspended against a part of the casing. I jerked and tore at the rim of the casing, hoping Eet had not been able to seal in the stone too tightly. As my nails broke and my fingers were lacerated by the sharp edging I began to despair. One-handed there was little I could do to force it.

But I continued to fight, and at last I must have touched what lock was there, for a whole section of panel fell down and I saw the brilliant blaze of the large stone within. The bowl snapped to meet it until stone touched stone, and I did not try to part them. With the bowl I began to retrace my way.

When I subsided beside Zilwrich, the bowl on the floor between us, he looked at the gems but seemed as content as I at that moment to do no more. Not only was I too weak to prod my body to more effort, but my thoughts were dulled, slow. Now that I had found the second stone, I could not see any way to make use of it against Ryzk. It seemed that, having achieved this one small success, I was finished.

Eet lay on the edge of the Zacathan's pallet and one of the alien's scaled hands rested on the mutant's head.

“This one is not dead—”

I was startled out of my lethargy. “But—”

“There is still the spark of life, very low, very dim, but there.”

I was no medico, and even if I had been I would have had no knowledge to deduce the mutant's hurts. My own helplessness was an added burden. Eet would die and there was nothing I could do—

Or was there?

For a little beyond Eet's head was the bowl, the stones close-welded together. The zero stone was power. It had the power to turn us into the seeming of others and hold that seeming. And I had been able to turn Eet into a cat because I had sprung that change on him when he did not expect it. Could I will, not change, but will life itself into the mutant's body?

As long as there was a faint spark left, I must try.

I took the left hand on my limp and useless arm with my right, moved the numb palm to rest on the stones, not caring if I would be burned. At least I would not feel it. The right I put on Eet's head. I set my mind to the task, summoning, not some strange disguise for my companion, but rather the sight of him as he was alive. So did I fight my battle—with mind, with a hand which will always bear the scars, with my determination, against death itself, or what Eet's kind knew as the end of existence. And I strove with the power passing through me to find that spark Zilwrich said existed, to fan it into flame.

The stones made a fire to fill one's sight, shutting out the cabin, the Zacathan, even Eet, but I continued to hold the image of the live Eet in my mind. My eyes which had been useless in the dark of the cell were now blinded again, by light. But I held fast in spite of that in me which cringed, and cried, and tried to flee.

Nor was I truly conscious of why I fought that battle, save that it was one which I must face to the end. I was at last done, my seared hand lying palm up on my knee, the bowl and stone hidden from me by a fold of cloth. Eet no longer lay limp, with the semblance of death, but sat on his haunches, his paw-hands folded over his middle, his stance one of alert life, of complete restoration.

I caught communication, or the edge of it, between the Zacathan and my companion. But so difficult was it now for me to hold to any thought that it was more like hearing a murmur or whisper from across a room.

Eet moved with all his old agility, bringing out the aid kit, seeing to my hand, giving me also a shot to counteract the hurt in my arm. But to me this had little or no meaning. I watched the Zacathan agree to something Eet suggested and the mutant carry the bowl out of the room—into hiding again, I supposed. But all I wanted was sleep.

Hunger awoke me. I was still in the Zacathan's cabin. If Ryzk had paid him a visit during the time I slept he had not seen fit to return me to custody. But that I had slept worried me vaguely. There was much to be done and I had failed to do it.

Eet whisked in, almost as if my waking had sent him some signal. He carried in his mouth as he came two of those tubes of E-rations. And seeing them, for a second or two I forgot all else. But when I had squeezed one into my mouth and savored the first few swallows (though normally I would not have considered them appetizing) I had a question:

“Ryzk?”

“We can do nothing while in hyper,” Eet reported. “And he has found his own amusement. It seems that this ship was not thoroughly searched when it was taken in as a smuggler. Somehow Ryzk uncovered a supply of vorx and is now having sweet dreams in his cabin.”

Vorx was potent enough to give anyone dreams—though whether they were sweet was another question. It was not only an intoxicating drink, but so acted on Terran bodies that it was also hallucinatory. That Ryzk had been searching the ship did not surprise me either. The boredom of space travel would set any man immured within these walls during hyper passage to do such to relieve his tedium. And Ryzk might have known this was a smuggler sold after confiscation.

“He had help—” Eet commented. There was such a bubbling renewal of well-being in him as made me envious, perhaps tired of being on the edge wash of such energy.

“From you?”

“From our distinguished colleague.” Eet nodded to the Zacathan.

“It would seem that Ryzk's weakness is drink,” Zilwrich agreed. “While it is wrong of anyone to play upon another's weakness, there are times when such a fall from Full Grace is necessary. I deemed that I might take on error-load for once in this way. We need Ryzk's room rather than his company.”

“If we come out of hyper in the Lylestane system we shall be in Patrol territory,” I replied a little sourly.

“It is possible to come out and go in again before a challenge of boarding can be delivered,” Zilwrich returned. “I have a duty to report the raid on our camp, that is true. But I have also a duty to those who sent my party there. This map is such a find as we come upon perhaps once in a thousand years. If we can find a clue to the location of the planet it marks, then a scouting trip thither at this time means more than arousing the law as to what has happened in one raid.”

“But Ryzk is pilot. He will not agree to go off known charts. And if he's made up his mind to turn us in—”

“Off the charts,” repeated the Zacathan thoughtfully. “Of that we cannot be sure as yet. Look—”

He produced a tri-dee projector which I knew to be part of the equipment of the control cabin. At a push of his finger there flashed on the wall a blowup of a star chart. Being no astro-navigator, I could not read it to any real purpose, save that I could make out the position of stars and sight the coded co-ordinates for hyper jumps under each.

“This is on the edge of the dead strip,” Zilwrich informed me. “To your left and third from the corner is the blasted system of Waystar. It must have been scouted three centuries ago, by your time, from the dates on this chart. This is one of the old Blue maps. Now, look upon the bowl, imagine that the dead sun on that system is a red dwarf, turn the bowl two degrees left—”

I held up the bowl and rotated it slowly, looking from it to the tri-dee chart on the wall. Though I was not taught to read such maps I could see he was right! Not only did the blasted system we had just fled appear on the bowl as one about the red-dwarf star—a dying sun—but there was a course to be traced from that to the zero stone.

“No co-ordinates for hyper,” I pointed out. “It would be the most reckless kind of guesswork. And even a scout trained for exploring jumps would take chances of two comets to a star of coming out safe.”

“Look at the bowl through this.” It would seem that Eet must have been gathering aids from all over the ship, for what the Zacathan handed me now was my own jeweler's lens.

As I inspected the constellation engraved on the metal through the magnification of the lens I saw there were minute identations there, though I could not translate any.

“
Their
hyper code perhaps,” the Zacathan continued.

“Still no good to us.”

“Of that I am not sure. We have those of the dead system—from that—”

“You can work?” Of course, he was an archaeologist and such puzzles were common to him. I lost something of my mood of depression. Perhaps because my hunger had been satisfied and I could now use my arm and hand to better advantage, I was regaining confidence not only in myself but in the knowledge and ingenuity of my companions.

When I put the bowl on the floor, open side down so that its star-specked dome was revealed, Eet squatted by it. He had taken up the lens, holding it in his paw-hands, his head bent over it as if his nose were smelling out the pictured solar systems.

“It can be done.” His thought was not only clear; it was as confident as if there had been no obstructions at all between us and success. “We return to the dead system by reversing Ryzk's tape—”

“And so straight into what may be a vla-wasp nest,” I commented. “But continue. Perhaps you have an answer for that also. Then what do we do, unless the Honorable Elder”—I gave Zilwrich the proper title of formal address—“can read these co-ordinates.”

Eet did not close his mind as he had upon occasion, but I read a side flash of what might be indecision. I had never read fear in Eet's communications—awareness of danger, but not fear. But this had the aura of just that emotion.

And inspiration hit me in the same instant. “
You
can read these!” I had not perhaps meant it as an accusation, but it came forth that way.

His head turned on his too-long neck so that he could look at me.

“Old habits, memories, die hard,” he answered obliquely, as he sometimes did. He turned the lens about, giving me the impression of uneasiness, of one wanting to escape coming to a decision.

I caught a flicker of alien mind-flow, and for a moment resented that communication I could not share. It was my guess that the alien and the mutant might be in argument about just the knowledge I accused Eet of having.

“Just so.” Eet resumed touch with me. “No, I cannot read these. But they are enough like another form of record for me to guess to more purpose than the rest of you.” And such was the finality of that answer that I knew better than to try to pry at how he could be familiar with any record approximating that of a Forerunner race living millenniums ago. The old problem of who—or
what
—Eet was crossed my mind.

Though he made no comment, the impression remained that any guessing he would do would be against his inclination and that he had a personal reason for disliking the situation fortune had forced upon him.

It seemed that now I was to serve as his hands. And back in the control cabin I made ready to follow his instructions to reverse the course Ryzk had set and return us, as soon as we emerged near Lylestane, to the vicinity of Waystar.

Ryzk did not appear. Apparently the smugglers' drink was of great potency. What would have happened when we came out of hyper and he was not at the controls, I do not know. Perhaps we would have aimlessly cruised the Lylestane system as a traffic hazard until some Patrol ship linked beam and dragged us in as a derelict.

I punched out the figures Eet fed me and we were wrenched back on a return course once again from Lylestane. Once more in hyper, we had plenty of time to meditate on the numerous dangers our appearance near Waystar would range against us. Certainly our successful escape with the treasure had alerted all the defenses of the pirate stronghold. They would be expecting a visit from the Patrol on one hand, now that strangers knew the co-ordinates of their hide-out, and trouble from others, perhaps even the Guild, demanding an account of how or why loot could be so summarily removed from what was believed to be an impregnable safe place.

The only answer would be that we dared not linger long enough in the dead system to be detected. Our unarmed ship had no defense against what the Jacks could easily muster. Therefore, we must follow exactly the same procedure we had on emerging near Lylestane: We must have the other course ready to punch in and spend as little time in normal space as we could.

Success in that maneuver would depend entirely on what Zilwrich and Eet could produce in the way of a new course. And since I was no help to them, the ship and Ryzk were my concern.

My most practical answer to Ryzk was to apply a force lock on his cabin. He sobered up when we were back in hyper and his struggle with the door lock led me to state through the intercom that we had taken over. More than that I did not explain, and I turned off the com thereafter, so his demands went unheard. E-rations and water went to him through the regular supply vent and I left him to consider, soberly I hoped, the folly of the immediate past in relationship to the
Wendwind
and her owners.