The Star Hunters: A Star Kings Novel [The Two Thousand Centuries] Read online

  Mason came out of his dream, then. The Marches were his destination, and unless he played his part well there, he would not live long.

  He got out the tapes. It was time that he quit being Hugh Mason, Terran agent, and became Brond Holl, outlaw from Hercules.

  "I wonder,” he thought, as he adjusted the encephalograph, “if V'rann, the Orion agent, will use the same trick. Probably.

  No use to worry about that yet. He relaxed, and switched on the little machine, and let the recordings pour into his mind.

  All the memories of Brond Holl had been caught on these tapes by the electro-encephalographic recordings Valdez had made of the outlaw in Sirius Prison. The whole past life of the man unrolled in Mason's mind, as he lay in the rushing flitter, day after day.

  With the recorded memories of Brond Holl's earlier life, Mason was not so deeply concerned. But the Herculean outlaw's life at Quroon concerned him much indeed, and he ran those tapes again and again. He learned all that the man remembered about Quroon City, and about the outlaw captains of the Marches. Garr Atten, the big Hydran who was unofficial leader of the captains, and Fayaman of Draco who was no friend to Brond Holl at all, and Hoxie, the old Terran, and others like Shaa of Rigel and Kikuri of Polaris who were humanoid, not human.

  But then Mason learned an upsetting thing. Brond Hall's mind had held a fierce conviction that it was someone at Quroon who had secretly sent out the tip that had got him captured.

  "The devil!” thought Mason. “If that's so, I've got Brond Holl's enemies, as well as that agent from Orion, to guard against while I look for Ryll Emrys."

  He dismissed the disturbing possibility from mind for the present, and began the task of learning how to impersonate Brond Holl.

  Mason put on the visi-audio tapes that had been made of the outlaw. He watched them over and over, studying every mannerism, tone of voice and gesture of Brond Holl. He practiced being the Herculean, striding back and forth in the flitter, swearing at the confinement, frowning blackly.

  When he thought he had finally absorbed all that he could from the tapes, he carefully destroyed them all.

  The flitter sped on and on. Even at its milli-light-speeds, the voyage seemed endless. But finally, its auto-pilot changed course. The flitter was coming down from the high jump, angling down over the frontier between the Kingdom of Lyra and the Marches of Outer Space.

  Mason did not relax his tension when he was down over the frontier. Lyra cruisers prowled into the Marches at times, and would have heard the flash about Brond Holl's escape in a Terran flitter.

  He breathed a little more easily when he saw looming up ahead a gigantic, glowing cloud. It was the Dumbbell Nebula—a vast cloud of cosmic dust illumined by the light of the stars deep inside it. The dust made radar unreliable, and he would be safer to cut through the nebula. He sent the flitter plunging into the cloud.

  His radar screen now became murky and uncertain but he watched it constantly. The fogged stars in here that shone out like eerie witchfires were easy to avoid, but there might be dark bodies and he would have little enough warning of them.

  The flitter was two-thirds of the way through the cloud, when Mason uttered a sudden exclamation.

  The radar screen, clearing for a second, showed a symmetrical formation of several dozens of blips, not moving but poised immobile here in the nebula not far from him.

  "Ships—cruisers—a full squadron!” Mason muttered. “Hiding here in the nebula—"

  The radar screen distorted and fogged again. The hidden ships might not have seen him on their radar in that brief moment of clearing, but if they had seen him. He sent the flitter rushing ahead at highest speed, expecting every moment a burst of missiles. Nothing happened. Then he had not been spotted?

  "But whose ships are they? Lyran cruisers watching for outlaw ships? No, they couldn't watch with their radar fogged—"

  An alarming possibility burst upon him.

  "By Heaven, that could be it!"

  The flitter burst out of the nebula into open space again. Before him stretched a vast region of scattered stars and clotted star-clusters, thinning in number as they approached the fringe of the galaxy. Here was the no-man's-land of the galaxy, the Marches of Outer Space.

  Somewhere in this nameless frontier region was Ryll Emrys, the fugitive scientist whom Orion wanted back so badly.

  "And Brond Holl's own enemies,” thought Mason grimly. “Well, I asked for it."

  He sent the flitter on a straight course toward Quroon.

  CHAPTER III

  DEEP INSIDE a dense cluster of stars there burned a brilliant, emerald-colored sun with a single world. That big green sun and its planet were guarded on every side by the thickly-swarming hosts of stars whose interacting gravitational fields created a navigation danger made worse by the presence of great drift-streams.

  To the lush warm world of the green sun, inhabited only by small and primitive humanoids, had come some of the first explorers who had reached this fringe of the galaxy. That had been long ago in the days when the human race was bursting out from Sol in explosive fashion. But in those great days, when star-kingdoms were rising and grabbing for worlds in the constellational wilderness, this cluster was too dangerous to be tempting. The colonizers, the kingdom-makers, had ignored this fringe region and had gone toward richer parts of the galaxy.

  Later, fugitives from the laws of the star-kings had come to the world of this green star Quroon. More and more of them had come, human and humanoid, Terrans and Orionids and Cassiopeians, until there had grown up that strange outlaw civilization ruled by the captains whose armed star-cruisers were the only law out here on the Rim. Often, the kings of Cassiopeia and Lyra and Draco had talked of banding together to crush the outlaws of the Marches, but always their rival claims to the territory had prevented such action.

  Mason, navigating the flitter at reduced speed through the bewildering blaze of the cluster suns, thought that eventually one of the star-kingdoms would try to grab the Marches.

  "And a nice job they'll have, when they try it,” he thought.

  The powerful magnetic and gravitational fields of the thronging stars had his instruments cockeyed. He more than once almost took routes between star-systems that would have led into blind alleys of drift.

  But he had Brond Holl's memories to guide him, and he tacked through the cluster by familiar star-marks, always drawing nearer that emerald sun.

  He knew that there were automatic radar-warning stations located on planets and dead stars that he passed, flashing word of the coming of his small ship to Quroon. If more than one ship, the captains of the Marches would have been on the way to challenge him, but he met no challenge until he was through the last star-pass and running down on the green sun.

  A thin, nasal voice spoke suddenly out of his communic. “Cut your speed,” it said. “Say who you are and say it fast. You're in missile range."

  Mason knew that voice well. Rather, Brond Holl had known it well. He spoke back flatly into the communic.

  "Terran flitter, coming in. And a devil of a watch you're keeping to let me get this close, Hoxie."

  A crow of surprise and pleasure came from the communic. “Brond Holl, by all that's holy! We got the flash that you'd broken out at Sirius, but we didn't think you'd ever make it here."

  "I'm sure that broke a lot of hearts,” said Mason sourly.

  Speak like Brond Holl, think like him, be him—or you won't last an hour here at Quroon!

  He swept in toward the single world of the green sun, cutting speed steadily until he was racing down past two greenish moons toward the night side of the planet.

  The lights of Quroon City, stretching away in a small and formless swarm, came into view on the dark surface. Mason cut downward short of them, dropping toward the starport beacons.

  On the starport, a score or more of ships flashed back the green light of the two racing moons. Mason's mouth tightened. It looked as though all the captains were in, and that shoul
d make things interesting.

  The flitter came to rest not far from the radar and missile-gun towers. Mason looked to the hand-gun he had taken off the crewman back at Sirius Sixteen, then cracked the airlock and stepped out.

  He was used to strange starworlds, and anyway the iridescent radiance of the two moons and the heavy, sweet and rotten smell that came from the jungle all around the spaceport were not new to him. They were in Brond Holl's memories, and he remembered very well the strange, polypous jungles of Quroon whose towering growths were halfway between plant and animal, like the sea-anemones of old Earth.

  He remembered, too, the man who was coming toward him through the moonlight from the radar tower. An old Terran, with white hair and a face seamed by a strenuous and unvirtuous lifetime, his rheumy eyes now lighting up with welcome.

  "So you made it after all,” he crowed delightedly. “Well, well, things'll be a bit more lively at Quroon with Brond Holl back.” Mason gave him the scowl that he felt sure the real Brond Holl would have done. He said, “What's the matter, Hoxie? Hasn't there been enough bloodshed lately to amuse you?"

  "Ho, you're a rare young hellion, Brond,” said old Hoxie, not at all offended. “I was just like you years ago—I'd take nothing from anybody. Those were the days when Quroon was fun."

  "Listen,” growled Mason, “don't you go arranging any fights for me just so you can enjoy watching."

  "You've got me wrong, Brond,” said Hoxie, in an injured tone. He took Mason's arm, starting back toward the tower, talking volubly. “I'm just glad to see you back, that's all. All the boys will be glad to see you back. Except maybe Fayaman."

  He darted a sidelong glance at Mason as he spoke the name, a sly, quick look.

  Beneath the radar tower was a ground-car and Hoxie led Mason solicitously toward it.

  "I'm taking you into the City myself, Brond. My second will keep the radar watch. I want to see their faces when you show up."

  "You didn't call Garr, then?” asked Mason.

  Hoxie uttered a nasal laugh. "No, sir, I didn't. I wanted it to be a real surprise."

  As the car started forward, Mason urgently reviewed the knowledge that had come to him out of the tapes of Brond Holl's memories.

  Old Hoxie was an ancient sinner who had always rather admired the tough, reckless Brond Holl.

  Fayaman, a Draconid who had been drummed out of Draco's navy years ago, was Brond Holl's enemy to the hilt. There had been a quarrel between them once over loot and Fayaman was not the type to forgive.

  Garr Atten was a much more formidable proposition. Garr, who had been by tacit consent the leader of the captains of the Marches for years, had never had much love for Brond Holl either.

  Mason turned his attention back to Hoxie. The old Terran was talking loquaciously as he drove down the road through the jungle. On either side of the passing car loomed up the strange polypoid growths, decked with cup-like leaves and flowers, swaying and writhing slowly in the moonlight. From their shadows came the multifarious sounds of small forms of life that he knew were as strange as the polypous plants.

  "Garr's going in for trade, and even work, now,” old Hoxie was complaining. “A hell of a thing for Quroon to come to. Time was, there was fun and plunder here but now Garr raises the devil if anyone goes raiding—as you will maybe find out."

  And again he gave Mason the sly, sidelong glance. But Mason refused to be prodded, his mind was too busy with his own problems. He had to find out if Ryll Emrys, was here, but he couldn't ask right out.

  "What's been going on since I left?” he asked Hoxie.

  "That's what we'd all like to know, Brond,” Hoxie answered.

  "What do you mean?"

  The old Terran looked at him shrewdly. “Garr's up to something, and won't say what. He's excited, and talks big about making the Marches a real independent kingdom. He says we're to hold off from any more raiding, and wait,” Hoxie grunted. “The men are tired of waiting."

  That meant little to Mason, and gave him no clue to what he wanted most to know. He tried again.

  "Has anybody new come in since I left?"

  Hoxie shrugged. “The usual people that get in trouble at home and have to run for the Marches—but nobody special. Except a fellow who got run out of Lyra for something, name of Chan Fairlie. He brought his woman along-and she's a looker. The boys all have their eye on her, especially Fayaman."

  Mason didn't think this could be the fugitive Orion scientist.

  "How long ago did Fairlie show up here?” he asked.

  "Only a few weeks ago,” Hoxie mumbled.

  That didn't fit at all, Mason thought, so it could not be Ryll Emrys. It could be the secret agent from Orion, their ace V'rann whom they had sent after Ryll Emrys, but such an agent wouldn't encumber himself with a woman. Still he'd better take a sharp look at Fairlie.

  The lights of Quroon City rose up ahead of them, and the car entered the unpaved streets of the town.

  Mason had been in many a strange city on far star-worlds, but never in such a one as this. Physically, it was unimpressive—a collection of one-story structures of black stone, built every which way along casually rambling streets, with the smaller dwellings extending away amid tall polyp trees from the bright-lighted street that was the main axis. Here there were drinking-places, shops and dives to serve the most motley population that Mason had ever seen.

  Human and humanoid, men and near-men from hundreds of starworlds far across the galaxy, and women and near-women too. Hair and scale and feather, beaked faces and noseless faces and wicked but quite human faces. Primitive little humanoid aborigines of Quroon itself, big and furry white humanoids from cold planets who panted in the humid night, proud-crested men from the old races of Rigel who walked like tigers, lithe and serpentine men from beyond the Polar Suns who had never been sons of Adam, and all of them with two things in common—all walked erect on two legs and all had got into trouble somewhere else in the galaxy.

  Speculative eyes of human woman, cat-eyes and pupilless round black eyes and blank, pale eyes that did not seem to see, stared at Mason as he and Hoxie got out of the car. He was known, and he heard the name of “Brond Holl” passing to and fro.

  "Come on,” said Hoxie, enjoying himself. “You came just the right time. The captains are meeting tonight."

  "Why?” demanded Mason sharply.

  "I told you they're tired of waiting for Garr to tell his plans, didn't I? That's why."

  They pushed through the motley crowd, and Mason let Hoxie lead the way to what appeared to be the biggest drinking-place in Quroon. But from the interior came no music or laughter—only the sound of an angry, bellowing voice. He went in, behind Hoxie.

  The room was big and stone-paved and stone-walled, a black room whose shadows not all the suspended krypton-lights could dispel. There were tables grouped in a rough ring, and men and not-men at the tables, and others standing in a crowd around the walls, and all of them listening to the man who was speaking angrily to them.

  It was Garr Atten who was speaking, and it seemed a little touching to Mason that Garr Atten should be trying to found a star kingdom when his throne-room was a tavern drinking-room on an outlaw world.

  "I'm damned if I don't give up and let you all go to the devil in your own way, if that's what you want!” Garr Atten was roaring.

  He was a giant Hydran well past youth, red-haired and with a battered, bronzed face and tawny eye that were flaming with leonine rage. He stood, great fists clenched, glaring, around the crowd.

  "I've told you that I've go plans, and you can trust me or not just as you wish,” he bellowed.

  A handsome, pale man with sleepy black eyes spoke up for the sullen crowd. “We trust you, Garr. But we'd like to know a little about it."

  Mason's eyes flew to that speaker. He knew him very well indeed, from Brond Holl's memories. He was Fayaman of Draco, and he was a man to watch.

  "Yes, there's your old friend,” said Hoxie in a chuckling whisper. He added, �
��That's the new man, Chan Fairlie, beside him. Ain't that woman of his something? Her name's Lua."

  Mason saw a man with the faintly bluish skin and blue-black hair of a Lyran, a tough-looking man with a square face. Behind him stood a Lyran girl, beautiful as only the blue-tinted women of Lyra were, her soft face anxious and half-fearful in expression as she listened to the rising clamor of voices.

  A big Betelgeusan humanoid, a striking figure with his body-fur of bright yellow, was speaking. His enormous eyes were fixed on Garr Atten, but the words he spoke were mild.

  "Now, Garr, when you said you could make the Marches a free kingdom, we all said we'd follow you. And we will."

  A tall humanoid captain from Rigel, his feathered crest ruffed erect, spoke up. “It's just that we're all tired of not doing anything."

  Garr Atten was not placated.

  "What do you want to do—go raiding into Lyra and Cassiopeia again?” he roared. “Bring a half-dozen star-kings down in full force to smash us? I tell you, times have changed. You try that, and you'll end up like—"

  Mason stepped out from behind the men in front of him, at that moment. The movement caught Garr's eye. The big Hydran stared at him, his mouth opened in surprise.

  "Like Brond Holl?” said Mason pleasantly. “Is that what you were going to say? Your moral example has gone sour, Garr. The bad penny has turned up again."

  He heard the buzz of voices, the startled exclamations, but paid no heed to them. He had to play Brond Holl to the hilt if his true identity was not to be suspected, and before these tough star-captains of the Marches there was only one way to play it.

  Fayaman, his white face suddenly a shade whiter, was glaring at Mason. With a smothered oath, he jumped to his feet. His hand snaked toward the missile-pistol hidden inside his shirt.

  Mason had expected something like that, and already had his hand on the hilt of his own missile-pistol.