Doomstar

'Others love their worlds, Flay. Others wish to live.' The two brothers were lifting the body of the third to lie across his saddle. Kettrick nodded toward them. 'So much the Doomstar has done for you. Now get them out of here.'

Flay looked at him a moment longer and then he turned and lifted his gaze to the red sun. His shoulders bent and the straightness left his spine. He moved to help his sons and in a minute or two they rode away, leading the dead man's beast. None of them spoke again, nor looked again at Kettrick.

Grellah sprang suddenly to life with a hum and whit of systems cutting in. Kettrick pushed the automatic control to close. The hatch clicked shut and sealed itself for space. The ladder retracted into its slot with a hollow grinding sound. Kettrick motioned to Chai and they walked back along the companionway, past the safety door that closed and sealed in its turn behind them, forming one of Grellah's two airlocks. The warning hooter began. Kettrick climbed the ladder to the bridge.

Boker was already at the controls. Hurth had been lifted onto one of the seats and Glevan was holding him. Kettrick sent Chai to help, noticing that Hurth was at least still breathing and able to groan. His skin was a hideous drowned color, but the blood on his shirt was bright enough. Kettrick sat down in Hurth's accustomed place beside Boker. Through the window they could see Flay's people getting the last of their comrades to safety. Kettrick watched them until the erupting flame and smoke of ignition blotted them from view. Then he said, 'This is another place I can never come back to.' Grellah rose up slowly past the huge red sun.

15

Hurth lived. That was one good, fine, happy thing. The slug had plowed along his heart ribs, knocking him unconscious and losing him a considerable amount of blood, but he lived.

Otherwise, there was nothing to cheer about.

'I did not get one minute alone with Sekma,' Boker said furiously. 'None of us did. Those three red apes, or their brothers, were with us every breath we drew. They wanted to be sure, I guess…in case there was any collusion, they wanted to know about it. And I didn't dare take a chance. None of us was armed, and they were set on a hair trigger, waiting to pounce on the first wrong move.'

'Also,' said Kettrick, 'there was me.'

'I love you, Johnny,' Boker said, 'like a brother. But if I'd thought I could do it and get away with it…'

'Sure,' said Kettrick. 'I know. So now what? Sekma's on his way to Gurra, so we can forget him.'

'Johnny, there was something not quite right. When he inspected the ship, he saw the stuff from Gurra, and of course I had to say I'd got it on Pellin. Flay's sons didn't know the difference but you know damn well Sekma did, and yet he never batted an eye. He's a smart man, a very smart man, as nobody should know better than we. Maybe he got the message. Maybe he's really on Seri's track himself, and just using their story about you as a cover.'

'I clung to some such hope myself,' said Kettrick. 'I hope it's true. However, just in case it isn't, we'd better think what we're going to do when we hit Kirnanoc.' And he added grimly, 'There's one good thing about Kirnanoc. I don't have any friends there.'

'Nobody does,' said Boker. 'And for that reason, you'd better stay in the ship, out of sight, while we're there. I'll do the footwork.'

They discussed it over and over while they were in jump.

'Unless we find that Sekma is on the job,' said Boker, 'We'll have to tell the I–C what we know, there's no doubt about that. Only I'm wondering when.'

'What do you mean, when?' asked Hurth, who was in a constant chafe lest his wound not heal quick enough to let him be in on everything that happened.

'If we go to them first thing,' said Boker, 'right after land, we might never take off again. They might want to hold us for questioning, or until somebody higher up comes and tells them what to do. They might want to throw Johnny in the pokey and the rest of us along with him.'

Hurth nodded. 'I never thought of that.'

'I have,' said Kettrick. 'The Doomstar is more important than what happens to us, but on the other hand… Hell, they might not even believe us. They might think it was all just a big grandstand play to take the heat off us. And by the time they could get hold of Sekma and check with him, it would be too late.'

'My suggestion,' said Boker, 'is to wait until we're ready to jump, meanwhile finding out all we can about Seri…Then send the I–C a message and run like hell.'

'Unless,' said Kettrick, 'Starbird is still on her pad when we get there. If she is, we'd better yell for help, loud and clear.'

Glevan, who had little time for talk between nursing Hurth and nursing the jump unit, was of the opinion that they would never catch up with Seri and neither would the I–C, and that the Doomstar would presently be shining for the whole Cluster to see and bow to.

He was also of the opinion that Sekma had gone to Gurra just as he said he would. Kettrick was afraid to think otherwise himself. Yet when they came out of jump and entered their landing pattern at Kirnanoc, he found that he was hoping, wildly hoping, that they would find Sekma waiting for them when they hit the dirt.

The starport of Achera, Kirnanoc's principal city, was as busy as Kettrick remembered it. Achera was the center from which all flowed, blessing and curse alike, to the remainder of the planet. There were some small fields scattered abroad for emergency medical or military use, but they were not open to traders. They were among the human tribes of Kirnanoc, and on this world the human was not the dominant animal. They had nothing to trade, and they supplied neither useful hides nor edible meat. Humans from other planets found them depressing in the extreme.

Kirnanoc, because it was situated at a kind of crossroads in the Cluster, had worked up quite an enviable position as an exchange and clearing house where traders often came to barter with other traders, as an easier means of obtaining goods from very distant or difficult worlds than by going after them personally. Kettrick had often done business here in the Market, selling cargoes ftom the special touch places like Gurra and Thwayn for a better price than he could get at Tananaru.

Port Authority guided them in to a pad in the northwest quadrant of the field. There were several score of ships ranged in orderly rows as far as the eye, at this level, could see. It was impossible to tell whether or not Starbird was among them.

'I'll go sign in, and check the board,' Boker said. 'Back in half an hour.'

He went out into the tawny glare of the afternoon. Kettrick watched him walk out to the transport strip and catch one of the trams. He rode away in it toward the Administration Center and was lost to sight among the looming ships.

Grellah's fans were going, sucking in the outside air. The smell of heat and water and the faint indescribable sweetness like a wicked spice that was the true ancient breath of Achera began slowly to replace the stale metallic-tasting stuff inside the ship. Overcome with restlessness, Kettrick went below to work with Glevan and Hurth on the jump unit Chai, who had been forbidden to go outside, sat forlornly peering out the open hatch.

For all his fatalistic pessimism, Glevan had an obsession now about getting that unit ready. He had hardly waited for Grellah to sit down before he was grubbing at her vitals. Hurth, still sore and wobbly, was handing him tools and making insulting answers to Glevan's running commentary concerning the woes that were about to befall the Cluster.

'And soon. Very soon.' Glevan's hands worked swiftly, his monkey face screwed up and his eyes intent on the mass of relay terminals he was checking. 'If Grellah should turn into a space hawk as quick-flying as thought, she still would be too slow to catch the Doomstar.'

'Then why work so hard?' demanded Hurth.

'Because I am a man, and a man is made of folly.' His hands flickered among the colored wires, the many- colored posts, checking, tightening. One loose contact could mean disaster. 'Man is also made of vanity. Between foolishness and vanity I fashion my own downfall. I like to think that I, with the skill of my hands and brain, can make this old ship do what she cannot do.' He glanced abruptly at Kettrick. 'Do you know, Johnny, there is a little less than one unit of Universal Arbitrary Time left before the meeting of the League of Cluster Worlds?'