Star Hunter
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[Illustration]
STAR HUNTER
ANDRE NORTON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10036
Copyright, 1961, by Ace Books, Inc.
* * * * *
STAR HUNTER
I
Nahuatl's larger moon pursued the smaller, greenish globe of its
companion across a cloudless sky in which the stars made a speckled
pattern like the scales of a huge serpent coiled around a black bowl.
Ras Hume paused at the border of scented spike-flowers on the top
terrace of the Pleasure House to wonder why he thought of serpents. He
understood. Mankind's age-old hatred, brought from his native planet
to the distant stars, was evil symbolized by a coil in a twisted,
belly-path across the ground. And on Nahuatl, as well as a dozen other
worlds, Wass was the serpent.
A night wind was rising, stirring the exotic, half-dozen other worlds'
foliage planted cunningly on the terrace to simulate the mystery of an
off-world jungle.
"Hume?" The inquiry seemed to come out of thin air over his head.
"Hume," he repeated his own name calmly.
A shaft of light brilliant enough to dazzle the eyes struck through
the massed vegetation, revealing a path. Hume lingered for a moment,
offering a counterstroke of indifference in what he had always known
would be a test of wits. Wass was Veep of a shadowy empire, but that
was apart from the world in which Ras Hume moved.
He strode deliberately down the corridor illuminated between leaf and
blossom walls. A grotesque lump of crystal leered at him from the
heart of a tharsala lilly bed. The intricate carving of a devilish
nonhuman set of features was a work of alien art. Tendrils of smoke
curled from the thing's flat nostrils, and Hume sniffed the scent of a
narcotic he recognized. He smiled. Such measures might soften up the
usual civ Wass interviewed here. But a star pilot turned out-hunter
was immunized against such mind clouding.
There was a door, the lintel and posts of which had more carving, but
this time Terran, Hume thought--old, very old. Perhaps rumor was
right, Milfors Wass might be truly native Terran and not second,
third, nor fourth generation star stock as most of those who reached
Nahuatl were.
The room beyond that elaborately carved entrance was, in contrast,
severe. Rust walls were bare of any pattern save an oval disk of
cloudy golden shimmer behind the chair at the long table of solid ruby
rock from Nahuatl's poisonous sister planet of Xipe. Without a pause
he walked to the chair and seated himself without invitation to wait
in the empty room.
That clouded oval might be a com device. Hume refused to look at it
after his first glance. This interview was to be person to person. If
Wass did not appear within a reasonable length of time he would leave.
And Hume hoped to any unseen watcher he presented the appearance of a
man not impressed by stage settings. After all he was now in the
seller's space boots, and it was a seller's market.
Ras Hume rested his right hand on the table. Against the polished glow
of the stone, the substance of it was flesh-tanned brown--a perfect
match for his left. And the subtle difference between true flesh and
false was no hindrance in the use of those fingers or their strength.
Save that it had pushed him out of command of a cargo-cum-liner and
hurled him down from the pinnacle of a star pilot. There were bitter
brackets about his mouth, set there by that hand as deeply as if
carved with a knife.
It had been four years--planet time--since he had lifted the Rigal
Rover from the launch pad on Sargon Two. He had suspected it might be
a tricky voyage with young Tors Wazalitz, who was a third owner of the
Kogan-Bors-Wazalitz line, and a Gratz chewer. But one did not argue
with the owners, except when the safety of the ship was concerned. The
Rigal Rover had made a crash landing at Alexbut, and a badly injured
pilot had brought her in by will, hope and a faith he speedily lost.
He received a plasta-hand, the best the medical center could supply
and a pension for life, forced by the public acclaim for a man who had
saved ships and lives. Then--the sack because a crazed Tors Wazalitz
was dead. They dared not try to stick Hume with a murder charge; the
voyage record tapes had been shot straight through to the Patrol
Council, and the evidence on those could be neither faked nor tampered
with. They could not give him a quick punishment, but they could try
to arrange a slow death. The word had gone out that Hume was off pilot
boards. They had tried to keep him out of space.
And they might have done it, too, had he been the usual type of pilot,
knowing only his trade. But some odd streak of restlessness had always
led him to apply for the rim runs, the very first flights to newly
opened worlds. Outside of the survey men, there were few qualified
pilots of his seniority who possessed such a wide and varied knowledge
of the galactic frontiers.
So when he learned that the ships' boards were irrevocably closed to
him, Hume had signed up with the Out-Hunters' Guild. There was a vast
difference between lifting a liner from a launching pad and guiding
civ hunters to worlds surveyed and staked out for their trips into the
wild. Hume relished the exploration part--he disliked the
leading-by-the-hand of nine-tenths of the Guild's clients.
But if he had not been in the Guild service he would never have made
that find on Jumala. That lucky, lucky find! Hume's plasta-flesh
fingers curved, their nails drew across the red surface of the table.
And where was Wass? He was about to rise and go when the golden oval
on the wall smoked, its substance thinning to a mist as a man stepped
through to the floor.
The newcomer was small compared to the former pilot, but he had
breadth of shoulder which made the upper part of his torso overbalance
his thin hips and legs. He was dressed most conservatively except for
a jeweled plaque resting on the tightly stretched gray silk of his
upper tunic at heart level. Unlike Hume he wore no visible arms belt,
but the other did not doubt that there were a number of devices
concealed in that room to counter the efforts of any assassin.
The man from the mirror spoke with a flat, toneless voice. His black
hair had been shaven well above his ears, the locks left on top of his
skull trained into a kind of bird's crest. As Hume, his visible areas
of flesh were deeply browned, but by nature rather than exposure to
space, the pilot guessed. His features were harsh, with a prominent
nose, a back-slanting forehead, eyes dark, long and large, with heavy
lids.
"Now--" He spread both his hands, palm down and flat on the table, a
gesture Hume found himself for some unknown reason copying. "You have
a proposition?"
But the pilot was not to be hurried, any more than he was to be
influenced by Wass' stage-settings.
"I have an idea," he corrected.
"There are many ideas." Wass leaned back in his chair, but he did not
remove his hands from the table. "Perhaps one in a thousand is the
kernel of something useful. For the rest, there is no need to trouble
a man."
"Agreed," Hume returned evenly. "But that one idea in a thousand can
also pay off in odds of a million to one, when and if a man has it."
"And you have such a one?"
"I have such a one." It was Hume's role now to impress the other by
his unshakable confidence. He had studied all the possibilities. Wass
was the right man, perhaps the only partner he could find. But Wass
must not know that.
"On Jumala?" Wass returned.
If that stare and statement was intended to rattle Hume it was a
wasted shot. To discover that he had just returned from that frontier
planet required no ingenuity on the Veep's part.
"Perhaps."
"Come, Out-Hunter Hume. We are both busy men, this is no time to play
tricks with words and hints. Either you have made a find worth the
attention of my organization or you have not. Let me be the judge."
This was it--the corner of no return. But Wass had his own code. The
Veep had established his tight control of his lawless organization by
set rules, and one of them was, don't be greedy. Wass was never
greedy, which is why the patrol had never been able to pull him down,
and those who dealt with him did not talk. If you had a good thing,
and Wass accepted temporary partnership, he kept his side of the
bargain rigidly. You did the same--or regretted your stupidity.
"A claimant to the Kogan estate--that good enough for you?"
Wass showed no surprise. "And how would such a claimant be profitable
to us?"
Hume appreciated that "us"; he had an in now. "If you supply the
claimant, surely you can claim a reward, in more ways than one."
"True. But one does not produce a claimant out of a Krusha dream. The
investigation for any such claim now would be made by a verity lab and
no imposture will pass those tests. While a real claimant would not
need your help or mine."
"Depends upon the claimant."
"One you discovered on Jumala?"
"No." Hume shook his head slowly. "I found something else on
Jumala--an L-B from Largo Drift intact and in good shape. From the
evidence now in existence it could have landed there with survivors
aboard."
"And the evidence of such survivors living on--that exists also?"
Hume shrugged, his plasta-flesh fingers flexed slightly. "It has been
six planet years, there is a forest where the L-B rests. No, no
evidence at present."
"The Largo Drift," Wass repeated slowly, "carrying, among others,
Gentlefem Tharlee Kogan Brodie."
"And her son Rynch Brodie, who was at the time of the Largo Drift's
disappearance a boy of fourteen."
"You have indeed made a find." Wass gave that simple statement enough
emphasis to assure Hume he had won. His one-in-a-thousand idea had
been absorbed, was now being examined, amplified, broken down into
details he could never have hoped to manage for himself, by the most
cunning criminal brain in at least five solar systems.
"Is there any hope of survivors?" Wass attacked the problem straight
on.
"No evidence even of there being any passengers when the L-B planeted.
Those are automatic and released a certain number of seconds after an
accident alarm. For what it's worth the hatch of this one was open. It
could have brought in survivors. But I was on Jumala for three months
with a full Guild crew and we found no sign of any castaways."
"So you propose--?"
"On the basis of my report Jumala has been put up for a safari choice.
The L-B could well be innocently discovered by a client. Every one
knows the story with the case dragging through the Ten Sector-Terran
Courts now. Gentlefem Brodie and her son might not have been news ten
years ago. Now, with a third of the Kogan-Bors-Wazalitz control going
to them, any find linked with the Largo Drift would gain full galactic
coverage."
"You have a choice of survivor? The Gentlefem?"
Hume shook his head. "The boy. He was bright, according to the stories
since, and he would have the survival manual from the ship to study.
He could have grown up in the wilds of an unopened planet. To use a
woman is too tricky."
"You are entirely right. But we shall require an extremely clever
imposter."
"I think not." Hume's cool glance met Wass'. "We only need a youth of
the proper general physical description and the use of a conditioner."
Wass' expression did not change, there was no sign that Hume's hint
had struck home. But when he replied there was a slight change in the
monotone of his voice.
"You seem to know a great deal."
"I am a man who listens," Hume replied, "and I do not always discount
rumor as mere fantasy."
"That is true. As one of the guild you would be interested in the root
of fact beneath the plant of fiction," Wass acknowledged. "You appear
to have done some planning on your own."
"I have waited and watched for just such an opportunity as this," Hume
answered.
"Ah, yes. The Kogan-Bors-Wazalitz combine incurred your displeasure. I
see you are also a man who does not forget easily. And that, too, I
understand. It is a foible of my own, Out-Hunter. I neither forget
nor forgive my enemies, though I may seem to do so and time separates
them from their past deeds for a space."
Hume accepted that warning--both must keep any bargain. Wass was
silent for a moment, as if to leave time for the thought to root
itself, then he spoke again.
"A youth with the proper physical qualifications. Have you any such in
mind?"
"I think so." Hume was short.
"He will need certain memories; those take time to tape."
"Those dealing with Jumala, I can supply."
"Yes. You will have to provide a tape beginning with his arrival on
that world. For such family material as is necessary I shall have
ready. An interesting project, even apart from its value to us. This
is one to intrigue experts."
Expert psycho-techs--Wass had them. Men who had slipped over the
border of the law, had entered Wass' organization and prospered there.
There were some techs crooked enough to enjoy such a project for its
own sake, indulging in forbidden experimentation. For a moment, but
only for a moment, something in Hume jibbed at the intent of carrying
through his plan. Then he shrugged that tinge aside.
"How soon do you wish to move?"
"How long will preparation take?" Hume asked in return, for the second
time battling a taste of concern.
"Three months, maybe four. There's research to be done and tapes to be
made."
"It will be six months probably before the Guild sets up a safari for
Jumala."
Wass smiled. "That need not worry us. When the time comes for a
safari, there shall also be clients, impeccable clients, asking for it
to be planned."
There would be, too, Hume knew. Wass' influence reached into places
where the Veep himself was totally unknown. Yes, he could count on an
excellent, well above suspicion, set of clients to discover Rynch
Brodie when the time came.
"I can deliver the boy tonight, or early tomorrow morning. Where?"
"You are sure of your selection?"
"He fulfills the requirements, the right age, general appearance. A
boy who will not be missed, who has no kin, no ties, and who will
drop out of sight without any questions to be asked."
"Very well. Get him at once. Deliver him here."
Wass swept one hand across the table surface. On the red of the stone
there glowed for seconds an address. Hume noted it, nodded. It was one
in the center of the port town, one which could be visited at an odd
hour without exciting any curiosity. He rose.
"He will be there."
"Tomorrow, at your convenience," Wass added, "you will come to this
place." Again the palm moved and a second address showed on the table.
"There you will begin your tape for our use. It may take several
sessions."
"I'm ready. I still have the long report to make to the Guild, so the
material is still available on my note tapes."
"Excellent. Out-Hunter Hume, I salute a new colleague." At last Wass'
right hand came up from the table. "May we both have luck equal to our
industry."
"Luck to equal our desires," Hume corrected him.
"A very telling phrase, Out-Hunter. Luck to equal our desires. Yes,
let us both deserve that."
2
The Starfall was a long way down scale from the pleasure houses of the
upper town. Here strange vices were also merchandise, but not such
exotics as Wass provided. This was strictly for crewmen of the star
freighters who could be speedily and expertly separated from a
voyage's pay in an evening. The tantalizing scents of Wass' terraces
were reduced here to simply smells, the majority of which were not
fragrant.
There had already been two fatal duels that evening. A tubeman from a
rim ship had challenged a space miner to settle a difference with
those vicious whips made from the tail casings of Flangoid flying
lizards, an encounter which left both men in ribbons, one dead, one
dying. And a scarred, ex-space marine had blaster-flamed one of the
Star-and-Comet dealers into charred human ash.
The young man who had been ordered to help clear away the second loser
retired to the stinking alley outside to lose the meal which was part
of his meager day's pay. Now he crawled back inside, his face
greenish, one hand pressed to his middle section.
He was thin, the fine bones of his face tight under the pallid skin,
his ribs showing even through the sleazy fabric of the threadbare
tunic with its house seal. When he leaned his head back against the
grime encrusted wall, raising his face to the light, his hair had the
glint of bright chestnut, a gold which was also red. And for his
swamper's labor he was almost fastidiously clean.
"You--Lansor!"
He shivered as if an icy wind had found him and opened his eyes. They
seemed disproportionately large in his skin and bone face and were of
an odd shade, neither green nor blue, but somewhere between.
"Get going, you! Ain't paying out good credits for you to sit there
like you was buying on your own!" The Salarkian who loomed above him
spoke accentless, idiomatic Basic Space which came strangely from
between his yellow lips. A furred hand thrust the handle of a mop-up
stick at the young man, a taloned thumb jerked the direction in which
to use that evil-smelling object. Vye Lansor levered himself up the
wall, took the mop, setting his teeth grimly.
Someone had spilled a mug of Kardo and the deep purple liquid was
already patterning the con-stone floor past any hope of cleaning. But
he set to work slapping the fringe of the noisome mop back and forth
to sop up what he could. The smell of the Kardo uniting with the
general effluvia of the room and its inhabitants heightened his
queasiness.
Working blindly in a half stupor, he was not aware of the man sitting
alone in the booth until his mop spattered the ankle of one of the
drinking girls. She struck him sharply across the face with a
sputtering curse in the tongue of Altar-Ishtar.
The blow sent him back against the open lattice of the booth. As he
tried to steady himself another hand reached up, fingers tightened
about his wrist. He flinched, tried to jerk away from that hold, only
to discover that he was the other's prisoner.
And looking down at his captor in apprehension, he was aware even then
of the different quality of this man. The patron wore the tunic of a
crewman, lighter patches where the ship's badges should have been to
show that he was not engaged. But, though his tunic was shabby, dirty,
his magnetic boots scuffed and badly worn, he was not like the others
now enjoying the pleasures of the Starfall.
"This one--he makes trouble?" The vast bulk of the Vorm-man who was
the Starfall's private law moved through the crowd with serene
confidence in his own strength, which no one there, unless blind,
deaf, and out-of-the-senses drunk, could dispute. His scaled,
six-fingered, claw hand reached out for Lansor and the boy cringed.
"No trouble!" There was the click of authority in the voice of the man
in the booth. His face, moments earlier taut and sharp with
intelligence, was suddenly slack, his tone slurred as he answered:
"Looks like an old shipmate. No trouble, just want a drink with an old
shipmate."
But the grip which had pulled Vye forward, swung him around and down
on the other bench in the booth, was anything but slack. The Vorm-man
glanced from the patron of the Starfall to its least important
employee and then grinned, thrusting his fanged jaws close to
Lansor's.
"If the master wants to drink, you dirt-rat, you drink!"
Vye nodded vigorously, and then put his hand to his mouth, afraid his
stomach was about to betray him again. Apprehensive, he watched the
Vorm-man turn away. Only when that broad, green-gray back was lost in
the smoky far reaches of the room did he expel his breath again.
"Here--" The grip was gone from his wrist, but fingers now put a mug
into his hand. "Drink!"
He tried to protest, knew it was hopeless, and used both hands to get
the mug to his lips, mouthing the stinging liquid in dull despair.
Only, instead of bringing nausea with it, the stuff settled his
stomach, cleared his head, with an after glow with which he managed
to relax from the tense state of endurance which filled his hours in
the Starfall.
Half of the mug's contents inside him and he dared to raise his eyes
to the man opposite him. Yes, this was no common crewman, nor was he
drunk as he had pretended for the Vorm-man. Now he watched the milling
crowd with a kind of detachment, though Vye was sure he was aware of
every move he himself made.
Vye finished the liquid. For the first time since he had come into
this place two months earlier he felt like a real person again. And he
had wits enough to guess that the potion he had just swallowed
contained some drug. Only now he did not care at all. Anything which
could wipe out in moments all the shame, fear, and sick despair the
Starfall had planted in him was worth swallowing. Why the other had
drugged him was a mystery, but he was content to wait for
enlightenment.
Lansor's companion once more applied that compelling pressure to the
younger man's bony forearm. Linked by that hold they left the
Starfall, came into the cooler, far more pleasant atmosphere of the
street. They were a block away before Vye's guide halted, though he
did not release his prisoner.
"Forty names of Dugor!" he spat.
Lansor waited, breathing in the air of early morning. The confidence
of the drug still held. At the moment he was certain nothing could be
as bad as the life behind him, he was willing to face what this
strange patron of the Starfall had in mind.
The other slapped his hand down on an air-car call button, stood
waiting until one of the city flitters landed on beam before them.
From the seat of the air-car Vye noted they were heading into the
respectability of the upper city, away from the stews ringing the
launch port. He tried to guess their destination or purpose, not that
either mattered much. Then the car descended on a landing stage.
The stranger waved Lansor through a doorway, down a short corridor
into a room of private quarters. Vye sat down gingerly on the foam
seat extending from the wall as he neared. He stared about. Dimly he
could just remember rooms which had this degree of comfort, but so
dimly now he could not be sure they did not exist only in his vivid
imagination. For Vye's imagination had buoyed him first through the
drab existence in a State Child's Creche, then through a state-found
job which he had lost because he could not adapt to the mechanical
life of a computer tender, and had been an anchor and an escape when
he had sunk through the depths of the port to the last refuge in the
Starfall.
Now he pressed both his hands into the soft stuff of the seat and
gaped at a small tri-dee on the wall facing him, a miniature scene of
life on some other planet wherein a creature enveloped in short black
and white striped fur crept belly flat, to stalk long-legged,
short-winged birds making blood-red splotches against yellow reed
banks under a pale violet sky. He feasted on its color, on the sense
of freedom and off-world wonders which it raised in him.
"Who are you?"
The stranger's abrupt question brought him back, not only to the room
but to his own precarious position. He moistened his lips, no longer
quite so aglow with confidence.
"Vye--Vye Lansor." Then he added his other identification, "S. C. C.
425061."
"State child, eh?" The other had pushed a button for a refresher cup,
then was sipping its contents slowly. He did not ring for a second to
offer Vye. "Parents?"
Lansor shook his head. "I was brought in after the Five-Hour Fever
epidemic. They didn't try to keep records, there were too many of us."
The man was watching him levelly over the rim of that cup. There was
something cold in that study, something which curbed Vye's pleasant
feeling of only moments earlier. Now the other set down his drink,
crossed the room. Cupping his hand under Lansor's chin, he brought up
his head in a way which stirred a sullen resentment in the younger
man, yet something told him resistance would only bring trouble.
"I'd say Terran stock--not more than second generation." He was
talking to himself more than to Vye. He loosed his hold on the boy's
chin, but he still stood there surveying him from head to foot. Lansor
wanted to squirm, but he fought that impulse, and managed to meet the
other's gaze when it reached his face again.
"No--not the usual port-drift. I was right all the way." Now he
looked at Vye again as if the younger man did have a brain, emotions,
some call on his interest as a personality. "Want a job?"
Lansor pressed his hand deeper into the foam seat. "What--what kind?"
He was angry and ashamed at that small betraying break in his voice.