papers on his desk. “She’s on a trading voyage to the west now, but Nazvik’s coming back here before he goes south. Be here in about ten days.” He looked up. “You have business with Nazvik?”
Raud shook his head. “Not with Yorn Nazvik, no. My business is with the two Starfolk who are passengers with him. Dranigo and Salvadro.”
The Southron looked displeased. “Aren’t you getting just a little above yourself, old man, calling the Prince Salsavadran and the Lord Dranigrastan by their familiar names?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Those were the names they gave me; I didn’t know they had any others.”
The Southron started to laugh, then stopped.
“And if I may ask, what is your name, and what business have you with them?” he inquired.
Raud told him his name. “I have something for them. Something they want very badly. If I can find a place to stay here, I will wait until they return—”
The Southron got to his feet. “Wait here for a moment, Keeper,” he said. “I’ll be back soon.”
He left the desk, going into another room. After a while, he came back. This time he was respectful.
“I was talking to the Lord Dranigrastan—whom you know as Dranigo—on the radio. He and the Prince Salsavadran are lifting clear of the Issa in their airboat and coming back here to see you. They should be here in about three hours. If, in the meantime, you wish to bathe and rest, I’ll find you a room. And I suppose you’ll want something to eat, too. …”
He was waiting at the front of the office, looking out the glass wall, when the airboat came in and grounded, and Salvadro and Dranigo jumped out and came hurrying up the walk to the doorway.
“Well, here you are, Keeper,” Dranigo greeted him, clasping his hand. Then he saw the bearskin bundle under Raud’s arm. “You brought it with you? But didn’t you believe that we were coming?”
“Are you going to let us have it?” Salvadro was asking.
“Yes; I will sell it to you, for the price you offered. I am not fit to be Keeper any longer. I lost it. It was stolen from me, the day after I saw you, and I have only yesterday gotten it back. Both my dogs were killed, too. I can no longer keep it safe. Better that you take it with you to Dremna, away from this world where it was made. I have thought, before, that this world and I are both old and good for nothing any more.”
“This world may be old, Keeper,” Dranigo said, “but it is the Mother-World, Terra, the world that sent Man to the Stars. And you—when you lost the Crown, you recovered it again.”
“The next time, I won’t be able to. Too many people will know that the Crown is worth stealing, and the next time, they’ll kill me first.”
“Well, we said we’d give you twenty thousand trade-tokens for it,” Salvadro said. “We’ll have them for you as soon as we can draw them from the Government bank, here. Or give you a check and let you draw them as you want them.” Raud didn’t understand that, and Salvadro didn’t try to explain. “And then we’ll fly you home.”
He shook his head. “No, I have no home. The place where you saw me is Keeper’s House, and I am not the Keeper any more. I will stay here and find a place to live, and pay somebody to take care of me. …”
With twenty thousand trade-tokens, he could do that. It would buy a house in which he could live, and he could find some woman who had lost her man, who would do his work for him. But he must be careful of the money. Dig a crypt in the corner of his house for it. He wondered if he could find a pair of good dogs and train them to guard it for him. …
Graveyard of Dreams
Standing at the armor-glass front of the observation deck and watching the mountains rise and grow on the horizon, Conn Maxwell gripped the metal handrail with painful intensity, as though trying to hold back the airship by force. Thirty minutes—twenty-six and a fraction of the Terran minutes he had become accustomed to—until he’d have to face it.
Then, realizing that he never, in his own thoughts, addressed himself as “sir,” he turned.
“I beg your pardon?”
It was the first officer, wearing a Terran Federation Space Navy uniform of forty years, or about ten regulation-changes, ago. That was the sort of thing he had taken for granted before he had gone away. Now he was noticing it everywhere.
“Thirty minutes out of Litchfield, sir,” the ship’s officer repeated. “You’ll go off by the midship gangway on the starboard side.”
“Yes, I know. Thank you.”
The first mate held out the clipboard he was carrying. “Would you mind checking over this, Mr. Maxwell? Your baggage list.”
“Certainly.” He glanced at the slip of paper. Valises, eighteen and twenty-five kilos, two; trunks, seventy-five and seventy kilos, two; microbook case, one-fifty kilos, one. The last item fanned up a little flicker of anger in him, not at any person, even himself, but at the situation in which he found himself and the futility of the whole thing.
“Yes, that’s everything. I have no hand-luggage, just this stuff.”
He noticed that this was the only baggage list under the clip; the other papers were all freight and express manifests. “Not many passengers left aboard, are there?”
“You’re the only one in first-class, sir,” the mate replied. “About forty farm-laborers on the lower deck. Everybody else got off at the other stops. Litchfield’s the end of the run. You know anything about the place?”
“I was born there. I’ve been away at school for the last five years.”
“On Baldur?”
“Terra. University of Montevideo.” Once Conn would have said it almost boastfully.
The mate gave him a quick look of surprised respect, then grinned and nodded. “Of course; I should have known. You’re Rodney Maxwell’s
