Watchers of the Dark (17 page)

Miss Schlupe, calm at last, faced Darzek like a small child expecting a whipping.

“What happened to the food?” he demanded.

“It wasn’t the food,” she confessed timorously.

“Then what was it?”

“Well, none of them would talk, so I thought I’d try something to loosen them up a bit. So I had each of them served—”

“Served what?”

“A shot of my rhubarb beer.”

“You couldn’t!” Darzek protested. “We drank the last of it when we left Smith!”

“I just made some more.”

“Where’d you get the rhubarb?”

“From Rhinzl.”

“You couldn’t!”

“Well, it
looked
like rhubarb. And it tasted like rhubarb—a little. And the beer is
good.”

“Is there any left? Let me try the stuff.”

She produced a flask. Darzek tasted, spat hurriedly. “Schluppy! That stuff is at least fifty proof!”

“I thought it had a rather nice kick to it.”

“It loosened them up, all right. We’ll be airing out the house for a week, and we may never live it down.”

“I’m sorry. All I wanted to do was make them talk.”

“They will. They’ll talk about it for periods, but I’ll be surprised if they ever speak to us again.”

“I thought they were very nice about it. They all apologized. They didn’t seem in the least offended. Gula Azfel even thanked me for a pleasant evening.”

“She’s probably delighted. This fiasco is proof positive that I need a wife to look after my entertaining. Well, it served one good purpose. It got them out of here. I was afraid they’d stay all night.”

The last guest had teetered homeward; the cleaners were humming busily. Darzek started for his room, and was flagged down by Gud Baxak. “Gul Rhinzl wishes to speak with you, Sire.”

“Rhinzl? Still here?”

“In the dark room.”

“Great Scott! The doctors wouldn’t think to look there. He may be dying!”

But Rhinzl was still seated in his dim corner, apparently in good health. “Are you all right?” Darzek demanded.

“Quite all right.”

“You see, everyone else got sick, and I was afraid—”

Rhinzl laughed softly. “It was rude of me, of course, but I didn’t drink. I only pretended. I offer my apologies.”

“Please don’t. I’m immensely relieved that you didn’t drink the stuff.”

“I waited because I wanted to ask your advice. My dwelling is of ample size. You are familiar with my business reputation. I have lived alone for many periods, and it makes it difficult for me to maintain any social position. I wondered if you would have any objection to my marrying.”

“Why should I object?” Darzek exclaimed in amazement.

“I thought it best to obtain your approval. You see, it is Gula Schlu that I wish to marry.”

“Gula Schlu!”

“She is a charming person. I have long admired her—ever since we first met. She will make an excellent hostess, and she shares my interest in plants and flowers. I am uncertain as to the customs of your kind, so I need your advice. How should I proceed with a proposal of marriage?”

“I am sure that Gula Schlu would feel honored—”

“Thank you. In that case I’ll make the necessary legal arrangements immediately.”

“But she could not possibly accept,” Darzek added quickly. “As my kind ages, she is beyond the age for marriage.”

Rhinzl pondered this and pronounced it exceedingly strange. “I have heard of minimum ages for marriage,” he mused, “but never a maximum age. Both in appearance and in actions Gula Schlu seems commendably, even invigoratingly, young.”

“That will please her very much. I have no right to give you an answer for her. My kind considers marriage a personal matter that one must decide for oneself. I’ll gladly tell her of your proposal and send you her answer tomorrow. I feel certain, though, that she will not accept. As I said, she is beyond the age for marriage.”

“This would not matter to me if she did not find it an obstacle. But I’m sure that you understand your kind better than I.”

Darzek dimmed the reception room and bowed Rhinzl to the transmitter, murmuring regrets and condolences.

“My first proposal of marriage,” Miss Schlupe said tearfully, a few minutes later. “He’s such a nice person, too. You could have at least let me decline it myself!”

“Where was the market for
Iwip
nuts?”

“A world called Quarm.”

Darzek nodded sagely. Quarm seemed to be running through his personal saga like a thread—a dark thread.

“Listen carefully,” he told Gud Baxak. “I want you to go back to Yorlq and make some motions toward buying
Iwip
nuts. Mind you, I don’t want to buy any. I don’t even want a free sample. I just want to know if
Iwip
nuts can be bought.”

Gud Baxak said slowly, “But if you don’t want to buy any—”

“Never mind. You’ve told me what I wanted to know.”

He dismissed him and signaled to Kxon.

Enormous tubes fanned out from the base of the transfer station, and arriving ships were netted and carefully guided into berths that lay at right angles beneath them. Darzek and Kxon rode a conveyor down a tube to the
efa
ship and stood looking down into its cavernous interior. Even though an unbroken procession of passenger and freight compartments traveled this same route to be packed into the ships, there were far more workers about than Darzek had expected. He concluded that the handling of the huge compartments under zero gravity required finesse and judgment that machines could not be trusted to exercise without constant supervision.

No one challenged their presence there. The workers seemed never to have heard of stowaways. Kxon boldly took a step forward and floated down into the ship, and Darzek followed him.

“What’s that?” Darzek asked, pointing.

“They’ve installed a special transmitter,” Kxon said. “A transmitter with a viewing screen.”

“What do they use it for?”

“I don’t know.”

Kxon rippled open a door and dropped to the deck in mid-stride as he moved into the light gravity of the ship’s service and control section. It was primarily a cargo ship, and the lounge was tiny. Darzek quickly investigated a row of storage compartments, rippling open doors, closing them.

“What’s this stuff?” he asked.

“Vacuum suits. For emergencies.”

Darzek backed into the compartment. “This is for me. It won’t be too uncomfortable, and they shouldn’t be looking in here before they get under way. If there is an emergency I’ll have first crack at a suit. Run along, before someone sees you and gets supicious.”

“You’ll have a long wait,” Kxon said. “The ship is only half-loaded.”

“A long wait will be good for me. I have several things to think about.”

“You won’t let me come?”

“I need you here on Yorlq. You know what to do. Off with you, now.”

He rippled the door shut and sank back upon the billowing softness.

The
efa
were trading with the Dark. There wasn’t a
Iwip
nut to be had on Yorlq, which meant that the
efa
still exercised its monopoly and thought it could make a greater profit by handling the entire crop itself. Probably it had a number of ships trading with Dark worlds. It had gotten overconfident and handled the purchase of this one so clumsily that E-Wusk had detected it.

“The
efa
may be agents of the Dark,” Darzek mused, “or they may be astute traders who know an opportunity when they see one. In either case I’ll be getting my first look at a Dark world. It’s up to me to see that it isn’t the last.”

He had given Kxon a verbal message for Miss Schlupe, a written message to be handed to her if he was gone more than three days, and another written message to be held against the possibility that he might not return at all.

He had only one real worry about her. He hoped she wouldn’t do something foolish, such as elope.

He dozed off, found the lounge still deserted when he awoke, and went back to sleep. He was awakened by a muffled babble of talk. The low, rumbling tones were familiar; at least two of the
efa
were present, but he had never been able to distinguish their voices. Carefully holding the door to keep it from collapsing, he opened it a crack and peeked out.

An argument was in progress. Brokefa, the most remote from Darzek, was sullenly silent. Three of his
maf-
cousins were discussing something with much heated waving of tendrils. An animate of a type Darzek did not recognize, probably the ship’s captain, stood at the far side of the room and studiously pretended to ignore the argument, if indeed he understood it. The language was a strange one, perhaps a private
maf
dialect. Darzek listened for a time, attempting to pick out the words, and then he disgustedly edged the door shut.

Much later he detected the subtle, almost imperceptible vibration that preceded the ship’s first transmission. He released the door for another peek at the lounge. Only Brokefa was there, sitting dejectedly in the same position. Darzek closed the door again. Whatever the
efa
were up to, Brokefa didn’t care for it.

Darzek’s position, close to the hull of the ship, received vibrations and sounds he had not experienced in a passenger compartment. Time stretched out tediously in the darkness as he tabulated the transmitting leaps, the long waits between them, and finally the interminable, humming approach by rocket.

The rockets cut off. They should have been jockeying into a berth at a transfer station, and Darzek strained his ears for sounds of a net scraping across the ship’s hull and tensed himself for its telltale jerk. He heard nothing, felt nothing.

He opened the door a crack and took a deep breath of fresh air. The time had come, he thought, to make his presence known. He allowed the door to collapse soundlessly and stepped out.

The lounge was empty. Beyond a distant, open door were the fantastic complexities of the control room, which was also deserted. Darzek turned the other way and stepped into the cargo section.

A narrow alley led between the stacked cargo compartments to an open space by the newly installed transmitter. The
efa
and all of the crew were gathered around it, watching its screen intently. A curved sliver of light hung there, motionless against a backdrop of deep black. It swooped toward them and gave Darzek a dizzying sensation of rushing headlong on a collision course. Surface details appeared: a range of snowcapped, cragged mountains marching in stately formation off into the night shadow; the green oval of an inland sea; a dark patch of forest.

Quarm.

As it moved closer Darzek realized that their approach was illusory, a process of the screen’s magnification. They were in a remote orbit, and the lighted crescent widened as they circled toward daylight.

Quarm. A primitive world. Darzek saw a network of roads, which no fully transmitterized planet would need. The viewer finally centered upon a village, and as the magnification brought it closer Darzek thought nostalgically that he was receiving a distorted glimpse of Earth. The dome-shaped buildings were capped with odd-looking cupolas, and the one principal street coiled out from a central, ovular park, with smaller ovals and their surrounding clusters of buildings threaded onto it like symmetrical ornaments.

The viewer focused on the central oval and brought it closer.

“Put down the transmitter,” the captain ordered.

A crew member thrust a frame with a weighted base into the ship’s transmitter; the others watched the screen in tense silence.

Suddenly Darzek understood what they were doing: they were attemping a difficult “point” transmission, the transmitting of an object to a precise point without the benefit of a receiver. If their calculations were even slightly off, the frame might materialize a hundred feet in the air and fall to its destruction.

But were there no transmitters operating on Quarm? He watched incredulously.

“It’s down,” the captain said, as though he could not quite believe it himself. “It’s operating.”

The
efa
turned in one motion to Brokefa, who gloomily said something in the
maf
language, stepped into the transmitter, vanished.

Darzek pushed past the crew members, excusing himself politely. The other three
efa,
suddenly aware of his presence, regarded him with mingled amazement and blank consternation. Before anyone could move to intercept him Darzek flung himself at the transmitter.

The sudden emergence in full gravity staggered him. His momentum sent him stumbling forward. He slipped to one knee, scrambled to his feet, and hurried after Brokefa. “Wait for me!” he called.

Brokefa turned. “Gul Darr!” he exclaimed. His amazed features assumed an expression remarkably akin to relief. He said simply, “I’m very glad to see you.”

They crossed the oval, wading through knee-high, yellowish grass that crackled protestingly with every step. What Darzek could see of the village had the lazy, unhurried aspect of a rural town on a quiet Sunday afternoon. Only the automobiles were lacking. There was no traffic.