Doomstar Read online

  He knew that this possibility was exactly what was on Flay's mind, only in reverse. He was worried about Seri, not Kettrick, and he wanted no risk of a chance meeting.

  Kettrick went hunting with Flay. Chai ran by his stirrup. The hounds did not like her, nor she them, and they stayed apart. The hounds killed twice. Something red and strange came into Chai's gaze. When they sighted a third quarry she said, "Kill, John-nee?"

  He spoke to Flay and the hounds were leashed. The men watched while the great gray Tchell went coursing, transfigured with a deadly beauty. Her body bent and swayed and stretched itself in the steps of a ballet dancer with a horned and fleeing creature across the red-gold grass, a swift ballet climaxed with a single leap. Flay grunted, with mingled admiration and distaste.

  "You have a peculiar friend."

  "She is loyal," Kettrick said. "Her people are still too close to the beast for treachery."

  They rode back toward the city with the lolling carcasses strapped behind saddles and Chai cleaned herself daintily with handsful of grass.

  It was dusk and coming on to snow when they met a boy, riding like the wind.

  13

  The company reined up, waiting while the boy talked to Flay, his voice urgent and excited. Because of the way the boy kept glancing at him, Kettrick knew that this was no domestic matter. It concerned him. He sat very still in the saddle, his hands tight on the reins. Snowflakes brushed his face with their cold, delicate touch. It seemed a very long time before Flay turned to him and said in lingua, "An I–C ship has landed, Johnny."

  Kettrick's heart gave a great leap. Luck was with them for once. They would not have to wait until they reached Kirnanoc. Help was here. They could tell the I–C men about Seri and the Doomstar, and with their faster ship they…

  A veil of snow blew between him and Flay, and through it in the dusk he could feel what he could not clearly see; Flay's eyes straining to read his face.

  And he realized that luck was not with them at all.

  Until the two ships were jump ready, they were all guests of the Firgals. And if the Firgals became suspicious, because of one slight word or action, that either or both groups might be on the track of Seri and the Doomstar, then none of them would live to take off.

  And the I–C could not possibly have chosen a worse time for a random spot check of Thwayn. Their arrival so close behind Grellah, and both of them so close behind Starbird, was enough to make anyone suspicious.

  He was surprised at the steadiness of his own voice when he spoke.

  "This is what we were afraid of, why we brought the trade goods and tried to make everything look normal. But now comes the real test, Flay."

  "Test, Johnny?"

  "Boker and the others can take care of themselves. The I–C has nothing against them. So it comes down to me, and you. Will you hide me, or will you turn me in?"

  He had never thought to see the day when he would hope that the answer would be, "I'll turn you in and be damned."

  "Turn you in, Johnny? My friend? May the Frost King freeze me into white, stone if I could think of such a thing?" Flay pondered a moment, shaking the snowflakes from his red braids. Then he spoke to the boy, who moved over beside Kettrick. "Go with him, Johnny. Don't worry about the I–C!"

  In a minute Flay and his party had vanished into the darkening snowfall. Kettrick looked after his friend with something less than gratitude, and prayed that Boker and Hurth and Glevan would keep their mouths shut. The boy called to him and started away in a different direction. Kettrick followed, keeping close so as not to lose him. Chai ran easily beside him with her hand on his knee.

  Presently, in what was now full dark and increasing cold, Kettrick smelled smoke and the heavy sweet-sour reek of penned animals. Stone walls appeared on either side of him, narrow as a cattle chute, and he realized that that was what it was. The boy halted and opened a gate, and they passed through into one of the big caves, half natural and half man-made, where stock was held over the winter.

  Kettrick was aware of dim shuffling mass movements as the creatures got Chai's scent and shifted away from it, snorting. The air became warmer and free from snow. The boy leaned over and took hold of Kettrick's bridle. They moved on very slowly and then stopped in pitch darkness. Kettrick heard the boy jump to the ground. A moment later a sulphur match spluttered brightly, dimmed, and brightened again to the larger glow of a lantern. The boy beckoned.

  Kettrick dismounted and followed him with Chai, into a hallway or tunnel cut in the stone at the back of the cave. They followed it for a long way. The floor slanted sometimes up, sometimes down. In places, the rock walls and ceiling were replaced by stout timbers chinked with clay. At irregular intervals there were doorways. Those on his left hand opened into buried storerooms. Those on the right belonged to houses, and through them he could hear the many sounds of families getting their dinners. The boy had brought them in at the lower end of one of the streets and they were now going behind the houses in one of the network of tunnels that gave access to storage cellars and to the cattle pens on days when extreme cold or heavy drifting made the street undesirable.

  At length the boy halted and knocked on one of the doors. It opened a crack and Kettrick saw the same buxom red-braided girl who had brought the food up to them, and he knew they were back at Flay's.

  There was some hurried low-voiced conversation, only this time Kettrick knew it did not concern him. The boy caught one of the red braids in his hand and pulled on it until the girl's face was in a position where she could not avoid being kissed, and she pushed at him with a great show of rage but no determination, and they both laughed, and Kettrick was glad that there were some people still with no more on their minds than kissing. He wished he were one of them.

  The girl beckoned him in finally, with a sidelong look at Chai. This was a different part of the house from the one Kettrick had seen before, and temporarily deserted, though there was noise enough beyond. The girl whisked him up another narrow stair that was like a ladder, her thick sturdy legs in knitted stockings as agile as a goat's. Under her woollen skirt she wore knickers made out of material as thick as a horse blanket. It was a cold world, Kettrick thought, and wondered if he would ever see another.

  At the top of the ladder was a room with a close bed and a shaggy hide rug on the floor. A tray of food and a clay bottle were laid ready on a table, and a lantern burned. A feeble fire struggled against a down draught in the small hearth, so that the room was well supplied with smoke but little warmth. The girl crooked her ringer importantly and he followed her to the bed. She scrambled into it and pointed with her finger to a place in the wall where the chinking was gone from between the stone and a massive support post. He was about to ask her a futile question when she made a gesture of wild impatience, as though to a very stupid child, bidding him be quiet. At the same time he heard voices from beyond the wall.

  The girl wriggled out of the bed and went away, shutting the door carefully behind her. Kettrick put his eye to the chink.

  On the other side of the wall was the room where Flay had entertained him and Boker. Flay and Boker were there now. They had just come in, and with them were two men in the dull-green uniforms of the I–C.

  One of them was Sekma.

  Kettrick drew back, feeling physically sick. He could hear them talking, but for the moment he was too stunned to listen. Chai started to speak to him and he caught her just in time, warning her to silence. Then he pointed to the table. "Eat," he whispered. "Not hungry now, bring the bottle."

  She brought him the clay bottle and then settled herself to eat from the tray. Kettrick pulled one of the heavy blankets around him and hunched up in the corner of the bed where the chink was. He took a long pull at the whiskey and then laid his head against the cold stone.

  On the other side of the wall the men had sat down and Flay was pouring drinks for them, and everything was friendly. The second I–C man, a plum-colored, loose-jointed chap from Shargo on the other side
of the Cluster, was just at the edge of Kettrick's view. His rather blobby features appeared free from all strain. Boker, his silver mane bristling down over the neck of his coverall, had his back to Kettrick. His voice sounded as jovial and careless as ever. It was only because Kettrick knew him so well that he could tell by the set of his back and rather overlargeness of his gestures that he was inwardly anything but careless.

  Sekma was facing Kettrick. The narrow head, the tight curls like a copper helmet, the chiseled bones, the brilliant blue eyes…there he was, so close, so tantalizingly close. Kettrick had only to cry out through the chink in the wall…

  He bit hard on hiis tongue to keep from doing it.

  "Just a routine check," Sekma was saying. "Thank you, Flay." They all drank politely.

  And why the hell, thought Kettrick, couldn't you have made your routine check a little earlier, when Seri was here? You could have caught him then…

  No. Seri would have set up shop for an innocent trader. He would have had the components of the Doomstar well hidden, most certainly beyond the range of any ordinary search. And if by chance he had been caught, the Firgals would have seen to it that Sekma did not profit by his interference.

  "Everything is in order," Boker was telling Sekma. "You're welcome to inspect the ship."

  "I shall," said Sekma, and accepted another cup from Flay, who now sat down beside him.

  "You may inspect the trading place, too," said Flay. "Although every time you do it is the same thing. Some day I will have to arrange a few parcels of narcotic just to make you happy."

  "It's a kind thought, Flay," said Sekma. "We like to have some justification for these trips, which are quite as tiresome for us as they are for you."

  "At least," said Flay, "Interworld-Commerce is democratic. It sends its high officers to work as well as the rank-and-file."

  Sekma smiled. "It doesn't 'send.' The choice is mine."

  "Then I would say that your devotion to duty is almost as good as a Firgal's." He flourished the bottle again, though Sekma had hardly touched his second cup. "Here, make your routine visit less tiresome with this. And perhaps tomorrow we will hunt, eh? This snow will not lie deep."

  "That would be enjoyable," said Sekma. "Thank you." He lifted his cup and sipped from it. Apparently his attention now was centered entirely on the liquor. Kettrick knew better. Sekma's whole body was a quivering antenna, sensitive to the flicker of an eyelash, the silence of a held breath.

  Boker said, "On Pellin I was offered a piece of contraband…a very attractive piece, I might say…but I declined it."

  Sekma's gaze never lifted from the smoky liquid in the cup. "You're learning virtue, Boker. I'm pleased." He savored the rather musty bouquet and then drank. He set the cup back down. "This trip has one aspect that is not routine, I must admit."

  "Ah," said Flay. "Aha."

  Boker's back stiffened. Only the Shargonese continued to sip his drink contentedly, unaware that death in the shape of strong red-braided men filled all the house and all the town around him. If he were not unaware, Kettrick envied him his iron nerve.

  "I have heard a rumor," Sekma said, "that Johnny Kettrick is back in the Cluster." Now his blue gaze flashed like lightning from Boker to Flay.

  "Johnny Kettrick?" said Boker.

  "Johnny?" said Flay. "Is he indeed? I should like to see him again. He can hunt and he can drink, he leaves my women alone, and he gives me the best barter of any trader. Boker is all right, Boker is good, but there was never another one like Johnny. You should not have driven him away."

  "Ah huh," said Sekma. "I have heard that tune sung before. Of course, then, you haven't seen him?"

  "Not I," said Flay, "Not here."

  "And you, Boker? Not here, of course, but say, at Ree Darva? There was word that he had been seen there, in the Out-Quarter."

  "That may be," said Boker, "but it must have been after I left."

  Sekma pinned him with that sharp gaze. "Why do you say it must have been? Do you know that he's back?"

  Of course, thought Kettrick, Sekma couldn't be sure that he had ever reached Tananaru. He might have gone anywhere from Aldebaran. He might have died there from sickness, or been killed by some squalid idiot with a share-the-wealth plan, or perished of an accident.

  Boker said, "You know we shipped together, you know we were friends. He'd have come to see me. That's why I say he must have come after I left, if he came at all, and that I can't tell. This is the first I've heard of it."

  Admirable liar, Boker. Convincing liar. Kettrick knew how he must be suffering. He found himself starting to laugh hysterically, and pulled hard on the bottle to stop it. Here for the first time in their lives he and Boker wanted to level with Sekma, and they couldn't. All because the Doomstar was true.

  He crouched in the close bed, peering through the chink and shivering with cold and frustration, until the men left. Before they did they had eaten a great deal, and drunk a good bit, and some of Flay's many sons had joined in, and somewhere along the line Flay asked Sekma where he had come from, and Sekma said, "Kirnanoc."

  "Ah," said Flay. 'Then you will go south across the Cluster?"

  Sekma nodded. "To Gurra. That was another of Kettrick's favorite haunts. They may have heard of him there."

  "There was no word of him on Pellin," Boker said. "If there had been, I'd have heard it. Everyone remembers that we were friends."

  "It is possible," said Flay carelessly, "that your rumor about Johnny is like most rumors, mere wind blowing from one empty space to another."

  They went away, leaving the room dark and silent. Leaving Kettrick, on the other side of the wall, to lie and think. To pray that Boker or Hurth or Gievan might find a time when he could speak to Sekma alone. Surely such a time would come…it only needed a moment. During the inspection of the ship, perhaps…

  But Flay's sons would be there. They did not speak Darvan, and it would be easy for Boker to talk to Sekma in a language they could not understand. Except that a name is a name in any language, and so is a word like Doomstar. And in any case, the Firgals were no fools. Even if Boker were actually only telling Sekma the latest dirty story, they would be instantly suspicious, wondering what was being said that the speaker wished to hide from them. The fate of their world hung on it. If they had to make a mistake, it would be at the expense of the outworlders, not their own.

  He hoped that Boker and the others would think of that.

  Unable to lie any longer in the stifling bed, Kettrick rose and stood looking out the tiny window into the freezing night, with the snow drifting gently down in the lee of the house. The confinement of the little room was almost more than he could bear.

  14

  He bore it for two days, largely with the help of the clay bottles that the broad girl kept him supplied with. Even so it was not easy. He waited with leaping nerves for the sound of feet on the stairs, the sudden angry crashing of the door.

  Each night in the next room Sekma and Boker and Flay and such of Flay's sons as were not on duty elsewhere ate and drank and danced delicately around the truth, while Kettrick listened with what finally became impatience for the one inevitable wrong word. Sometimes he was tempted to shout it out himself, just to get the thing over with.

  Other times he slept uneasily, passing from the first blank slumber induced by the bottle to a succession of bad dreams wherein he strove endlessly to catch up with Seri and was endlessly balked. The number and variety of frustration dreams his mind could produce on this subject were simply astounding.

  Again, he paced the floor in a rage of impatience. Grellah would be ready now. They ought to be taking off. How long was Sekma going to stay? Was Flay going to try and hold him here "until it was over," as he thought he was holding Kettrick?

  Several times he heard Flay, in his shrewd manner, question Sekma about his route. Each time it was the same. Out of Kirnanoc, bound for Gurra.

  Kettrick wondered how Sekma, who must have left Tananaru after Grellah did
, had managed to get to Kirnanoc so far ahead of them. He supposed it could be done. A long jump ship could certainly do it, by going clear out of the Cluster and then in again; the longest way, but the quickest. Or a relay of the fast I–C ships, taking a more direct route than Grellah's and wasting no time on stopovers.

  Why would he bother? Mere accident? Or had Sekma seen the posting of Grellah's itinerary and decided to intercept her in the hope of catching the missing Kettrick?

  Maybe. Only then why hadn't Sekma challenged Boker's assertion that he had come by way of Pellin?

  Kettrick's head ached, and from more than the fumes of the whiskey. And he felt like weeping when he thought how close Sekma must have come to meeting Seri at Kirnanoc, all unaware.

  I am the hell and all of a spaceman, Kettrick thought, a great success as a trader, and loved by all with fur, skin, or feathers. But as a man entrusted with a vital mission which all these qualities uniquely fit him to perform, I am a Cluster-wide disaster.

  Sekma must know that by now. Then why was he looking for Kettrick when the Doomstar was so much more, so infinitely more, important?

  Perhaps he wasn't, really…

  Kettrick held and nursed this little flicker of hope, afraid to blow on it and let it grow, afraid to let it die. Because if he were wrong and Sekma really was looking for him, there could only be one reason; it was too late to keep the Doomstar from shining, and Sekma desired to give his thanks to the man who had failed him so abysmally.

  He would not blame Sekma one little bit.

  Just before dawn of the third day he was brought up out of a thin sleep by the thunder of a ship's rockets firing for liftoff. He rushed to the window and saw a streak of flame vanishing across the sky beyond the hills. And he had a moment of sheer panic, wondering if Boker had decided to sacrifice him to the common good.

  A short time after that Flay came in and said, "They're gone, Johnny, those busy I–C men. Gone to pester the Gurrans, looking for you." He pushed Kettrick jovially toward the door. "Come out, breathe the air. Your friend looks as though she would enjoy a run. Let us hunt today."