always an uncertain quantity… most living things are, especially if they've been frightened or hurt.” Denman sighed and looked at the diamond-clear flame that was Allamar. “I wish,” he said, “that I was a drinking man.'
Later, lying in the dark cabin in his bunk, listening to the deep faint throbbing of the drives and feeling the fabric of the ship around him like an extension of his own flesh, Horne thought that Denman was taking the whole thing too big. He was a lonely man, obviously, far from what home and family he might have, and, just as obviously, he carried something of a grudge against his superiors, with all this talk of Denman being expendable and always getting the dirty jobs. Horne thought he was dramatizing the situation, both its importance and its danger, in order to dramatize himself.
Later still, when he came trundling down the beam of the automatic beacon to land on the single primitive field of Allamar Two, he was not so sure.
Horne had landed at Allamar once before, some five years ago. He remembered how it had been then, a festive occasion with much drumming and squealing of outlandish instruments, much waving of banners made out of feathers and bright leaves, and all-night sessions of solemn drinking after the business of trade was finished.
This time there were neither music nor banners. The
Then Horne pointed toward the forest edge that hemmed the landing-field.
The people of Allamar Two were a tall race, averaging nine feet or so for the adult men, very powerful in build, richly furred from crown to toe in varying shades of brown. They had huge eyes that reflected their gentle and rather solemn natures, and a turn of feature that gave them a permanent expression of mild dejection, lightened only occasionally, even at festival times, by a smile.
This time, now, they stood ranked in the shelter of the trees with weapons in their hands, primitive things made clumsily of wood and stone, for they were a peaceable folk. There were no women or children that Horne could see, only able-bodied men. They stood looking at the ship with an air of desperate incompetence that made Horne want to laugh, only it was not in the least funny.
Denman said, “You see?'
He began to walk toward the trees, his hands held up with the palms forward. He called out to the people, not in lingua franca but in their own tongue, which Horne did not understand. They answered him, and he stopped, and presently a group of five men came out from the trees to meet him. From their dress and ornaments Horne knew that these were chiefs. They talked with Denman, and after a time all six of them turned and came back toward the ship. Then the chiefs stopped and would come no farther.
Denman came all the way and picked up his bag. “They don't trust anybody any more,” he said to Wasek. “Will you come and speak to them? It might make things easier the next time a Federation ship wants to land here.'
Wasek went back with Denman and talked to the chiefs in the lingua franca. The talking did not last long. Wasek shook hands with Denman and returned to the ship. Looking tiny and forlorn amid the massive shaggy shapes, Denman went the other way, toward the forest.
Wasek shook his head. “Something has them all upset. I didn't really believe that talk about slavers, but now I'm beginning to.'
Horne looked after Denman. “I hope he'll be all right. I certainly don't envy his job here.'
He was worried about Denman. He was so worried that he felt guilty at the thought of leaving him and going on to the stopover at Skereth and the pleasant fleshpots there that awaited them before the return voyage.
He spoke of this to Vinson, and later he would remember that when he spoke, he had not the slightest premonitory prickle down his spine.
CHAPTER II
On Skereth, once in a lifetime a man may see the sun or catch a glimpse of the stars. Otherwise he lives beneath a wall of eternal cloud and takes the universe beyond on faith. Some people said that that peculiarity of nature explained the whole psychology of Skereth.
But, in the port city of Skambar, there was no need either of the stars or the single unseen moon to light the long nights. The glare of neons did that job with eye-searing efficiency. Skambar was a new city, grown up all haphazard around the big modern spaceport that served Skereth's lively interstellar trade among the Fringe worlds. There were blocks of tall new buildings set on fine straight streets, and then suddenly you were past them into a jumble of plastic shacks and jerry-built rooming houses, bars and shops and more bars and dubious-looking places with shuttered windows, gambling dens and still more bars, the whole mass of it shrieking with red and blue and green and yellow light. These lesser streets were narrow and inclined to wander furtively. By daylight, under the tawny blaze of the sky they looked cheap, frowsy and unclean. By night, while not exactly a fairyland, they were attractive enough to men who had been a long time in space.
Vinson was finding it delightful. Horne had been at some pains to take him to the better places he had found when he was here before. There were girls, quite human girls because the dominant people of Skereth were quite human, and some of the girls had cried out, “Jim! Jim!” and been glad to see him, which made Horne feel pleasantly experienced, so that he swaggered just a little before Vinson's admiring gaze. The girls were glad to have drinks bought for them, and they made much of Vinson, and altogether it looked as though it was going to be a good evening.
'Remember,” he said dryly to Vinson, “that the nights here are as long as three of ours, so space yourself. That palegreen stuff will have you flat on your ear.'
'It tastes like soda-pop,” Vinson said.
'It pops, all right. Like the top of your head off.” Horne lay back on the shoddy cushions that were provided for sitting, finding his head most pleasurably propped against something soft and warm. The room was big, with a low ceiling and no windows. Inside here the light was soft and dim, the warm air murmurous with voices and laughter. Horne thought fleetingly of Denman out on Allamar Two, crouched in some dismal village with his charges hunkered around him like so many unhappy Saint Bernards. He shook his head, and once again he felt a faint twinge of guiltiness.
The food, placed on tiny tables islanded among the cushions, was very good, and the girls were friendly, and presently the lights dimmed even more, except for one pale shaft in the middle of the room, and, a girl appeared in it carrying a curious basket woven of rushes. She was not a human. Her beauty was faintly shocking at first, and Horne heard Vinson draw his breath in sharply. The girl bent her silvery head over the basket and opened it, and then she began to dance.
Golden globes of light no bigger than might be circled by a thumb and finger floated up out of the basket and joined in her dancing.
Her body was slender and glinty and pliant as mist. It drifted and swayed in the single shaft of light, and the golden globes swirled around her, making a game out of the dancing, swooping with a rush like bursting bubbles up the slim curve of her flank, evading her hands as she laughed and caught at them, clothing her in veils of soft radiance and then whipping free in a kind of comet's tail to follow shining behind her head. At the last she lifted up her arms and all the shining globes were gathered into them, and she let them fall in a glittering cascade back into the rush basket, and closed the lid, and all the lights went out. When they came back on again the girl and her basket were gone.
In the midst of the applause, Horne saw that two young men had come up and were standing close by, looking down at him and Vinson.
They were natives of Skereth, with the light hair and clean-cut features of their race. They were little more than youngsters… students, Horne thought, out for an evening of glamor and excitement among the wild life of Skambar. They were staring with great interest at his and Vinson's shoulder patches with the insigne of the interlocking suns on them.
'You're off the Federation packet, aren't you?” one of them asked, and Horne nodded. They both smiled, and
