Doomstar

'Pellin,' said Flay, shaking his head. 'I must have heard wrong. Well, it's no matter. No matter at all.' He went to the stairway and hollered down it in his own tongue. While his back was turned both men tossed back their drinks and wiped the nervous sweat off their faces, and Boker's lips formed silently a word that meant, 'There was a dirty one!'

The tension seemed to have disappeared. A buxom girl with thick red braids swinging down her back brought up a huge tray of food, and they ate, and Flay's strapping sons began to come in from their work, and they ate and drank, and after a while everyone was happy and roaring out songs.

At a quite early hour, because the Firgals went early to bed, Kettrick and Boker rode back to the ship in the dark blowing dusk, loaded with food and drink. Three of Flay's sons went along as escort, to keep them from straying in the hills. When they reached the ship the sons went in with them, smiling and interested, chattering in fluent lingua. They were fascinated by ships, they said, and wanted to look around.

They looked, while Hurth and Glevan stuffed themselves and fell gratefully into their bunks. Kettrick had half expected something like this, so the sons peered everywhere without finding the spare bars hidden among the cargo, seeing only the obvious break in the pump linkage that fed the air supply. They stood around watching for quite a while after Boker and Kettrick went to work on the jump unit, and Kettrick fumed inwardly because they had to keep the pace leisurely while the audience was around. Finally the sons got bored and drifted off to the bridgeroom and went to sleep on the seats. After that Boker and Kettrick worked like madmen.

When at last it was Kettrick's turn to sleep it was easy to believe that everything would go all right now. The sons would be a nuisance, but as long as that link bar was missing they would be content. Boker and Hurth and Glevan would work around the clock. Kettrick would do the trading and keep Flay happy, and help the others as much as he could. They would have Grellah jump ready in record time and…

And go on after Seri with their hands reached out to catch the Doomstar.

And how much chance did they have to catch it, or stop it, or even slow it down.

The Firgals were in on it. They knew. Perhaps somewhere in that honeycomb town they had hidden away a piece of another world's destruction, bribed by Seri's glibly friendly, subtly threatening tongue. Just one thing promised to them would be enough for these people…safety for their own sun, their own cherished world. 'The Doomstar will never shine for us.' They had given their lives, their devotion, and endless hard work to this dying land. It would be a little thing to them to sacrifice some other planet, some other sun, to the ambitions of other men, as long as Thwayn was safe. The quarrel was none of theirs. All they knew was what belonged to them, what they made with their own strong hands and kept at the price of their own blood.

He did not know that he could entirely blame them.

But he could and did hate Seri with a vicious and dreadful hatred.

He slept and dreamed, and this time he walked in the sick light of the Doomstar with Boker and Nillaine and Flay and a host of others, all led by Glevan beating solemnly on a muffled drum. Presently Kettrick left them and ran by himself, searching and calling through the twisted streets, because Larith was somewhere there and needed him. He heard her voice quite clearly, crying out his name. Once or twice he saw the vanishing flutter of her skirts. He did not find her.

Next day he began the trading. It was too cold for an outside fair around the ship such as they had had at Gurra. Long lines of pack animals carried the bales of boxes into the city, to the Council Hall, and carried the furs and woollens and raw yarns back to Grellah.

If Seri had actually done any trading here, it had not made a noticeable dent in the Firgals' wealth. Kettrick traded all day and then took his turn with the others at night in the rusty bowels of the ship, getting glassy-eyed for lack of sleep but pleased all the same that Grellah would be ready in a little over two days instead of four.

Next morning Flay came out to the ship with no pack animals, but with a dozen men accoutred for the hunt, and a gaggle of 'hounds,' hairy creatures all tooth and claw and snuffling eagerness.

'There is no haste, Johnny,' he said. 'My son the smith, and he is the best smith even though he is my son, says it will take him more than seven days to make your bar. Perhaps as many as ten, because he must get a special metal.'

Kettrick allowed his face to fall, but not too far.

'So,' said Flay, 'let the trading wait for a while. The goods will keep, but my hounds are spoiling for a run. Come and hunt.'

Kettrick hesitated. 'Ten days,' he said. 'That's too bad.'

'Why, Johnny?'

'It's still a long way to the White Sun.'

'Learn patience. It will wait.'

'Well, since there's no help for it…' Kettrick shrugged. 'Maybe it's a good thing at that, when I think about it. Kirnanoc is the next jump from here…'

Flay appeared to be waiting politely for him to explain.

'I mean, Seri has to go there, too, so it's just as well for us to sit here for a while, give him time to do his business and clear out. I wouldn't want to run into Seri, especially on Kirnanoc.' Kettrick's smile was dazzling in its sincerity. 'Partner or not, I wouldn't trust him not to turn me in to the I–C office there. He had enough trouble on my account two years ago.'

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.