Dark Benediction

Beth sighed. “No, no—I said it. I’ll do it. But I can’t send a patrol ship that far. I’ll have to pay your way on a private vessel. We can find some excuse—exploration maybe.”

Roki’s eyes flickered sardonically. “Why not send a diplomatic delegation—to apologize to Sol for the blasting of their mercy ship.”

“Uk! With YOU aboard?”

“Certainly. They won’t know me.

Beth just stared at Roki as if he were of a strange species.

“You’ll do it?” urged Roki.

“I’ll think it over. I’ll see that you get there, if you insist on going. Now get out of here. I’ve had enough of you, Roki.”

The Cophian was not offended. He turned on his heel and left the office. The girl looked up from her filing cabinets as he came out. She darted ahead of him and blocked the doorway with her small tense body. Her face was a white mask of disgust, and she spoke between her teeth.

“How does it feel to murder ten thousand people and get away with it?” she hissed.

Roki looked at her face more closely and saw the racial characteristics of Jod VI—the slightly oversized irises of her yellow-brown eyes, the thin nose with flaring nostrils, the pointed jaw. Evidently some of her relatives had died in the disaster and she held him personally responsible. He had destroyed the help that was on its way to casualties.

“How does it feel?” she demanded, her voice going higher, and her hands clenching into weapons.

“Would you step aside please, Miss?”

A quick hand slashed out to rake his cheek with sharp nails. Pain seared his face. He did not move. Two bright stripes of blood appeared from his eye to the corner of his mouth. A drop trickled to the point of his chin and splattered down upon the girl’s shoe.

“On my planet,” he ‘said, in a not unkindly tone, “when a woman insists on behaving like an animal, we assist her—by having her flogged naked in the public square. I see personal dignity is not so highly prizedhere. You do not regard it as a crime to behave like an alley cat?”

Her breath gushed out of her in a sound of rage, and she tore at the wounds again. Then, when he did nothing but look at her coldly, she fled.

Eli Roki, born to the nobility of Coph, dedicated to the service of the Sixty-Star Cluster, suddenly found himself something of an outcast. As he strode down the corridor away from Beth’s office, he seemed to be walking into a thickening fog of desolation. He had no home now; for he had abdicated his hereditary rights on Coph in order to accept a commission with the SSC Patrol. That, too, was gone; and with it his career.

He had known from the moment he pressed the firing stud to blast the mercy freighter that unless the freighter proved to be a smuggler, his career would be forfeit. He was still morally certain that he had made no mistake. Had the freighter been carrying any other cargo, he would have been disciplined for not blasting it. And, if they had had nothing to hide, they would have stopped for inspection. Somewhere among Sol’s planets lay the answer to the question—“What else was aboard besides the cargo of mercy?”

Roki shivered and stiffened his shoulders as he rode homeward in a heliocab. If the answer to the question were “Nothing,” then according to the code of his planet, there was only one course left to follow. “The Sword of Apology” it was called.

He waited in his quarters for the colonel to fulfill his promise. On the following day, Beth called.

“I’ve found a Dalethian ship, Roki. Privately owned. Pilot’s willing to fly you out of the Cluster. It’s going as an observation mission—gather data on the Sol System. The commissioners vetoed the idea of sending a diplomatic delegation until we try to contact Solarians by high-C radio.”

“When do I leave?”

“Be at the spaceport tonight. And good luck, son. I’m sorry all this happened, and I hope—”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Well—”

“Well?”

The colonel grunted and hung up. Ex-Commander Roki gathered up his uniforms and went looking for a pawn shop. “Hock ‘em, or sell ‘em?” asked a bald man behind the counter. Then he peered more closely at Roki’s face, and paused to glance at a picture on the front page of the paper. “Oh,” he grunted, “you. You wanta sell ‘em.” With a slight sneer, he pulled two bills from his pocket and slapped them on the counter with a contemptuous take-it-or- leave-it stare. The clothing was worth at least twice as much. Roki took it after a moment’s hesitation. The money just matched the price tag on a sleek, snub-nosed Multin automatic that lay in the display case.

“And three hundred rounds of ammunition,” he said quietly as he pocketed the weapon.

The dealer sniffed. “It only takes one shot, bud—for what you need to do.”

Roki thanked him for the advice and took his three hundred rounds.

He arrived at the spaceport before his pilot, and went out to inspect the small Dalethian freighter that would bear him to the rim of the galaxy. His face clouded as he saw the pitted hull and the glaze of fusion around the lips of the jet tubes. Some of the ground personnel had left a Geiger hanging on the stern, to warn wanderers to keep away. Its dial indicator was fluttering in the red. He carried it into the ship. The needle dropped to a safe reading in the control cabin, but there were dangerous spots in the reactor room. Angrily he went to look over the controls.

His irritation grew. The ship—aptly named the Idiot—was of ancient vintage, without the standard warning systems or safety devices, and with no armament other than its ion guns. The fifth dial of its position-indicator was calibrated only to one hundred thousand C’s, and was redlined at ninety thousand. A modern service-ship, on the other hand, could have penetrated to a segment of five-space where light’s velocity was constant at one hundred fifty thousand C’s and could reach Sol in two months. The Idiot would need five or six, if it could make the trip at all. Roki dobted it. Under normal circumstances, he would hesitate to use the vessel even within the volume of the Sixty-Star Cluster.

He thought of protesting to Beth, but realized that the colonel had fulfilled his promise, and would do nothing more. Grumbling, he stowed his gear in the cargo hold, and settled down in the control room to doze in wait for the pilot.

A sharp whack across the soles of his hoots brought him painfully awake. “Get your feet off the controls!” snapped an angry voice.

Roki winced and blinked at a narrow frowning face with a cigar clenched in its teeth. “And get out of that chair!” the face growled around its cigar.

His feet stung with pain. He hissed a snarl and bounded to his feet; grabbing a handful of the intruder’s shirt- front, he aimed a punch at the cigar—then stayed the fist in midair. Something felt wrong about the shirt. Aghast, he realized there was a woman inside it. He let go and reddened. “I… I thought you were the pilot.”

She eyed him contemptuously as she tucked in her shirt. “I am, Doc.” She tossed her bat on the navigation desk, revealing a close-cropped head of dark hair. She removed the cigar from her face, neatly pinched out the fire, and filed the butt in the pocket of her dungarees for a rainy day. She had a nice mouth, with the cigar gone, but it was tight with anger.

“Stay out of my seat,” she told him crisply, “and out of my hair. Let’s get that straight before we start.”

“This… this is your tub?” he gasped.

She stalked to a panel and began punching settings into the courser. “That’s right. I’m Daleth Shipping Incorporated. Any comments?”

“You expect this wreck to make it to Sol?” he growled.

She snapped him a sharp, green-eyed glance. “Well listen to the free ride! Make your complaints to the colonel, fellow. I don’t expect anything, except my pay. I’m willing to chance it. Why shouldn’t you?”

“The existence of a fool is not necessarily a proof of the existence of two fools,” he said sourly.

“If you don’t like it, go elsewhere.” She straightened and swept him with a clinical glance. “But as I understand it, you can’t be too particular.”

He frowned. “Are you planning to make that your business?”