Dane flushed, stopped whistling in mid-note. “Terra Bound” was old and pretty well worn out; he didn’t know why he always unconsciously sounded off with that.
“A Chief Ranger from Khatka just came on board,” he reported, carefully offhand, as he busied himself reading labels. He knew better than to serve fish or any of its derivatives in disguise again.
“Khatka!” Tau sat up straighter. “Now there’s a planet worth visiting.”
“Not on a Free Trader’s pay,” commented Dane.
“You can always hope to make a big strike, boy. But what I wouldn’t give to lift ship for there!”
“Why? You’re no hunter. How come you want to heat jets for that port?”
“Oh, I don’t care about the game preserves, though they’re worth seeing, too. It’s the people themselves—”
“But they’re Terran settlers, or at least from Terran stock, aren’t they?”
“Sure,” Tau sipped his coffee slowly. “But there are settlers and settlers, son. And a lot depends upon when they left Terra and why, and who they were—also what happened to them after they landed out here.”
“And Khatkans are really special?”
“Well, they have an amazing history. The colony was founded by escaped prisoners—and just one racial stock. They took off from Earth close to the end of the Second Atomic War. That was a race war, remember? Which made it doubly ugly.” Tau’s mouth twisted in disgust. “As if the color of a man’s skin makes any difference in what lies under it! One side in that lineup tried to take over Africa—herded most of the natives into a giant concentration camp and practiced genocide on a grand scale. Then they were cracked themselves, hard and heavy. During the confusion some survivors in the camp staged a revolt, helped by the enemy. They captured an experimental station hidden in the center of the camp and made a break into space in two ships which had been built there. That voyage must have been a nightmare, but they were desperate. Somehow they made it out here to the rim and set down on Khatka without power enough to take off again—and by then most of them were dead.
“But we humans, no matter what our race, are a tough breed. The refugees discovered that climatically their new world was not too different from Africa, a lucky chance which might happen only once in a thousand times. So they thrived, the handful who survived. But the white technicians they had kidnaped to run the ships didn’t. For they set up a color bar in reverse. The lighter your skin, the lower you were in the social scale. By that kind of selective breeding the present Khatkans are very dark indeed.
“They reverted to the primitive for survival. Then, about two hundred years ago, long before the first Survey Scout discovered them, something happened. Either the parent race mutated, or, as sometimes occurs, a line of people of superior gifts emerged—not in a few isolated births, but with surprising regularity in five family clans. There was a short period of power struggle until they realized the foolishness of civil war and formed an oligarchy, heading a loose tribal organization. With the Five Families to push and lead, a new civilization developed, and when Survey came to call they were no longer savages. Combine bought the trade rights about seventy-five years ago. Then the Company and the Five Families got together and marketed a luxury item to the galaxy. You know how every super-jet big shot on twenty-five planets wants to say he’s hunted on Khatka. And if he can point out a graz head on his wall, or wear a tail bracelet, he’s able to strut with the best. To holiday on Khatka is both fabulous and fashionable—and very, very profitable for the natives and for Combine who sells transportation to the travelers.”
“I hear they have poachers, too,” Dane remarked.
“Yes, that naturally follows. You know what a glam skin brings on the market. Wherever you have a rigidly controlled export you’re going to have poachers and smugglers. But the Patrol doesn’t go to Khatka. The natives handle their own criminals. Personally, I’d cheerfully take a ninety-nine-year sentence in the Lunar mines in place of what the Khatkans dish out to a poacher they net!”
“So that rumor has spread satisfactorily!”
Coffee slopped over the brim of Tau’s mug and Dane dropped the packet of steak concentrate he was about to feed into the cooker. Chief Ranger Asaki loomed in the doorway of the mess as suddenly as if he had been teleported to that point.
The medic arose to his feet and smiled politely at the visitor.
“Do I detect in that observation, sir, the suggestion that the tales I have heard were deliberately set to blast where they would do the most good as deterrents?”
A fleeting grin broke the impassive somberness of the black face.
“I was informed you are a man skilled in ‘magic,’ Medic. You certainly display the traditional sorcerer’s quickness of wit. But this rumor is also truth.” The quirk of good humor had gone again, and there was an edge in the Chief Ranger’s voice which cut. “Poachers on Khatka would welcome the Patrol in place of the attention they now receive.”
He came into the mess cabin, Jellico behind him, and Dane pulled down two of the snap seats. He was holding a mug under the spout of the coffee dispenser as the captain made introductions.
“Thorson—our acting-cargo-master.”
“Thorson,” the Khatkan acknowledged with a grave nod of his head, and then glanced down to floor level with a look of surprise. Weaving a pattern about his legs, purring loudly, Sindbad was offering an unusually fervent welcome of his own. The Ranger went down on one knee, his hand out for Sindbad’s inquiring sniff. Then the cat butted that dark palm, batted at it playfully with claw-sheathed paw.
“A Terran cat! It is of the lion family?”
“Far removed,” Jellico supplied. “You’d have to add a lot of bulk to Sindbad to promote
