Doomstar

schoolmasterish, responsible for the safety of nine planets and a sun. His aide, a deceptively willowy chap with the most perfectly trimmed mustache Kettrick had ever seen, Marshall Wade. Fersen, sour-faced and frowning. The bull-shouldered, big-jawed man from the Department of Prosecutions, Arthur Raymond, otherwise known as The Minotaur. Dr. Hayton Smith, the astrophysicist. And two tall slender dusky-gold men who sat close to the fire and watched him with eyes of a bright and startling blue.

Howard Vickers, Chief of Solar System Security, broke the silence.

'Please sit down, Mr. Kettrick.'

Kettrick hesitated, and the younger and shorter of the two dusky-gold men said, in the sweet slurred cadence of his native speech, 'Better do it, Johnny. It may be a very long night.'

2

Kettrick answered, in the same slurred speech, 'Your advice was always good, Sekma, even if I didn't take it. So I'll take it now.'

He sat down in the one empty chair, which had heen placed as though by accident in such a position that all of the men could watch his every gesture and change of expression. Kettrick had a strange feeling that he was doing all this in a dream, a rather unpleasant dream, one of those things that seems quite normal on the surface but which the sleeper knows is a developing nightmare from which he will presently wake up screaming. But perversely, now that he was well into it, he did not want to wake up. He was consumed with curiosity.

'Would you like a drink?' asked Vickers.

'No, thank you,' said Kettrick. There were times when the instinct of self-preservation was stimulant enough, and better left to itself.

'Very well. Then first of all, Mr. Kettrick, I will ask you to listen without interrupting. You know Mr. Sekma. I believe you do not know Dr. Takinu. He is chief of astro-physical research for the Bureau of Astronomy at Tananaru.'

Kettrick bowed slightly to Takinu, who returned the acknowledgment. He was older than Sekma, beginning to show white circles in the tight copper-wire curls that covered his narrow head, and his face bore lines of strain, great and immediate, that one might look for in the face of a statesman but hardly in that of an astrophysicist concerned only with the remote crises of stars. Kettrick shot a quick glance at Smith and saw the shadow of the same thing in the Earthman's eyes.

Fear?

'Dr. Takinu will tell you himself what he has already told us.'

Vickers leaned back, and Takinu looked at Kettrick. 'It is convenient for you that I speak my own tongue?'

'It is convenient,' Kettrick said.

Fear?

'Good,' said Takinu. 'That way is quicker.' Wearily, as though he had repeated these same words until he hated them, he went on, 'Our instruments picked up and recorded a change in one of the outlying stars of the Hyades — a small fringe sun with no habitable planets. It was a routine sweep of the sky and the new data was only noticed when the computers found the discrepancy in the gamma radiation level for that portion of the sweep. We pinpointed the source of emission and made very exhaustive studies. Very exhaustive, Mr. Kettrick, very careful. The small star had suddenly become lethal.'

Takinu paused, frowning, and Sekma spoke.

'What he's trying to find the layman's language for, Johnny, is the explanation of how a star might suddenly, overnight, become deadly. How the solar processes might be changed, the cycle altered by some interference with the chemical balance, so that the output of gamma radiation is increased until every living thing on every planet of that star — if it had habitable planets — would be blasted out of existence. I don't think you have to go into the physics of it, Takinu. I think Johnny will accept the fact that it happened.'

'That is not difficult to accept,' said Takinu. 'It is as you say, a fact, demonstrable, actual, unarguable. What he may not so easily accept is our speculation as to the cause of this fact.'

His haunted eyes lingered on Kettrick, and now there was no doubt about the shadow. It was fear.

'I did not rely on my own judgment alone. I communicated with my old friend and respected colleague, Dr. Smith, of your Lunar Observatory.' Takinu gestured to Smith and said in lingua franca, 'It is your story now.'

Smith said, 'I made my own observations. Our instruments had of course detected the same aberration. My findings agree in every respect with those of Dr. Takinu.'

There was a moment of complete silence in the library. Not really silence, because Kettrick's stretched nerves were aware of every small rustle of cloth and whisper of breathing, the preternaturally loud noises of burning from the hearth. Then Smith said, completely without dramatics: 'We do not believe that the phenomenon was a natural one.'

Now again there was silence, and everybody seemed to be waiting for Kettrick to say something. Instead it was Sekma who spoke, in the lingua franca so that everybody could understand him.

'I'll make it plainer, Johnny. Somebody did it. Somebody has found the way to poison a star.'

'You were always a hard-headed man,' said Kettrick slowly. 'Damned hard, as I know to my sorrow. Dr. Takinu and Dr. Smith have their particular reasons for believing this unbelievable thing. What are yours?'

'Talk,' said Sekma. 'Rumors. Myths. Whispers. In my business I hear them. On a dozen planets, Johnny — not much, just here a word and there a word, sometimes in a city dive, sometimes at a jungle fire, but the word was an odd one and always the same. The word was Doomstar.'

He let the word hang in the air for a moment, and Kettrick heard it like the solemn clang of a distant bell.

'I don't put too much faith in talk,' said Sekma. 'Any creature, human, semihuman, or nonhuman, with an articulate tongue, can be depended on to wag it, and most of them prefer marvels to cold truth any day of their lives. But when I read Takinu's report, the coincidence was just a little too much to accept.'

Kettrick thought about it. 'How did the tongue-waggers react to the news that an actual Doomstar had appeared?'

'Well, that's the odd part of it. They never knew it had. The occurrence was so obscure that only astronomers could be aware of it, and most of them would pass it by as a natural accident.'

'Wouldn't it be simpler,' said Kettrick, 'to assume that it is just that?'

'Oh, much simpler, Johnny. Yes. But suppose it isn't. Suppose there is, say, only one chance in a million that it isn't.' He smiled at Kettrick, a smile that had in it very little humor. 'To quote one of your great poets, I am myself indifferent honest. But supposing you knew, or thought, that I might just possibly have in my hands the power to poison your sun. Would you sleep easily of nights?'

Kettrick nodded. 'All right, I won't argue that.' After a minute he said, 'I won't argue that at all. My God, what blackmail! One demonstration, announced and carried through, and every solar system in the Hyades would be cringing at your feet.'

'And no need to stop with the Hyades,' said Sekma.

Kettrick frowned and shook his head. 'But there wasn't one. A demonstration would be a necessity, and there wasn't one. Just one small obscure star.'

'We believe this was a test, Johnny. Every new weapon needs a field test. And this was successful. We believe our demonstration will come later, if…'

'If what?' asked Kettrick, knowing the answer.

'If we don't stop it.'

'And if there is, in truth and fact, a weapon.'

'This is what we have to find out. Is there a weapon — in truth and fact — and if there is, who has it, and where.'

'That could take a long time.'