Exiles of the Stars

'Getting something!' Korde leaned forward, half cutting off my view of the screen, so I pulled him back a little.

He was right. Once more there was a scene on the screen. We were looking into a much brighter section of countryside.

'The cache—they're looting the cache!' But we did not need that exclamation from Lidj.

There were excavation robos busy there. And they had broken through the plug we had thought the perfect protection. Three—no, four—men stood a little to one side watching the work. Two were armed with blasters, one had a robo control board. But the fourth, man—

I saw Lidj hunch farther toward the screen.

'I—don't—believe—it!' His denial was one we could have voiced as a chorus.

I knew Griss Sharvan; I had shared planet leave with him. He had been with me on Yiktor when first I had seen Maelen. It was utterly incredible that he should be standing there calmly watching the looting of our cargo. He was a Free Trader, born and bred to that life—and among us there were no traitors!

'He can only be mind-washed!' Lidj produced the one explanation we could accept. 'If an esper of the power Krip met got at him, it's no wonder they could find the cache. They could pick its hiding place right out of his brain! And they must have Hunold, too. But what are they—jacks?' He asked that of Harkon, depending upon the authority of one who should know his lawbreakers to give him an answer.

'Jacks—with such equipment? They don't make such elaborate efforts in their operations. I would think more likely a Guild job—'

'Thieves' Guild here?'

Lidj had a good right to his surprise. The Thieves' Guild was powerful, as everyone knew. But they did not operate on the far rim of the galaxy. Theirs was not the speculation of possible gains from raiding on frontier planets. Those small pickings were left to the jacks. The Guild planned bigger deals based on inner planets where wealth gathered, drawn in from those speculative ventures on the worlds the jacks plundered. If jacks had dealings with the Guild it was only when they fenced their take with the more powerful criminals. But they were very small operators compared with the members of that spider web which was, on some worlds, more powerful than the law. The Guild literally owned planets.

'Guild, or perhaps Guild-subsidized.' Harkon held to his point stubbornly.

Which made our own position even more precarious, though it would also account for the sabotage and the elaborate plan which seemed to have been set up to enmesh theLydis , both in space and here. The Guild had resources which even the Patrol could not guess. They were rumored to be ready to buy up, or acquire by other, more brutal means, new discoveries and inventions, so that they might keep ahead of their opponents. The boxed esper with the amplifier—yes, that could well be a Guild weapon. And the mining robos we saw at work here—

I thought at once of that cat mask on the cliff, of Maelen's assurance that other finds existed. Suppose some enterprising jack outfit, ambitious and far-seeing, had made the discovery that Sekhmet had such finds. With such a secret as their portion of the partnership, they could get Guild backing. At least to the extent of modern excavation equipment, plus such devices as the esper linkage for protection.

Then one of their men on Thoth could have picked up the news of our cargo. And they might have prepared to gather that in as a bonus. The Throne of Qur would be worth any effort. I could not help but believe that was the answer.

But what other devices could they have? That which sabotaged theLydis we still do not understand. And the esper was something entirely new. Nor were the Free Traders backward in hearing about such things.

'Look out!'

I was startled out of my thoughts by Harkon's cry. We could still see the scene of the cargo cache. The robos had started to bring out what we had stored there. But it was not that action which the Patrol pilot had noted.

One of the guards had turned about, was pointing his blaster directly at our screen. A moment later that went black.

'Took out the snooper,' Harkon commented.

'Now they know—first, that their esper is no longer controlling us; second, that we have learned of their activities in turn,' Lidj said. 'Do we now expect an attack in force?'

'What arms do you carry?' Harkon asked.

'No more than are allowed. We can break our seal on the ordnance compartment and get the rest of the blasters. That's the extent of it. A Trader depends on evasive action in space. And theLydis does not set down on worlds where the weapons are much more sophisticated than on Thoth. We haven't broken that seal in years.'

'And we don't know what they have—could be anything,' Harkon commented. 'I wonder who took out that amplifier. Might that man of yours be operating on his own—the one you did not see?'

But I was as certain as if I had witnessed the act. 'Maelen did that.'

'An animal—even a telepathic one—' Harkon began.

I eyed him coldly. 'Maelen is not an animal. She is a Thassa, a Moon Singer of Yiktor.' The odds were that he had not the slightest idea of what that meant, so I enlarged on that statement. 'She is an alien, wearing animal form only for a time. It is a custom among her people.' I was determined not to go farther into that. 'She would be perfectly capable of tracing the esper interference and knocking out the amplifier.'

But where was she now? Had she gone on to the cache to see what was happening there? I did not know how the jack guard had picked the snooper off so accurately. They were programmed to evade attack. He could have been just as quick to dispose of Maelen, had he_sighted her. They had probably been planeted on Sekhmet long enough to know most of the native wildlife, so they would have recognized her even in animal form as something from off-world, and been suspicious. I could imagine plainly the whole sequence of such a discovery.