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