Conquest Over Time
need only examine the positionof Diomed, which is conjunct Huck, and closely square to Lyndal, inthe third house of commerce, etc, etc. You see what I mean? On top ofthis yet an eclipse. Trav, you haven't got a prayer. If only youhadn't been so close. Two days from now would have been great. Oncethe eclipse ends--"
"Well, listen," Travis said desperately, "couldn't we just see theguy?"
"Take my advice. Don't. He has expressed alarm at the thought that youmight come near him. Also his guards are armed with blunderbusses.They may be a riot to look at, but those boys can shoot, believe me.Give you a contract? Trav, he wouldn't give you a broom to sweep outhis cellar."
At that moment they drew up before an enormous marble building vaguelyreminiscent of a Theban palace. It turned out to be the local hotel.Horton stopped on the threshold and handed them two of the tinyLangkits, the little black memory banks in which the language of Merthad been transcribed for their use by the Mapping Command. Travisslipped his automatically into position behind his ear, but he felt noneed to know the language. This one was going to be tough. He glancedat Dahlinger. The kid was wearing a stunned expression, too dulledeven to notice the pantalooned customer--first Merts they'dseen--eyeing them fearfully from behind pillars as they passed.
Smell that gold, Travis remembered wistfully. Then, smell thosegenerators. Oh, he thought sinkingly, smell those generators. Theywent silently on up to the room.
Travis stopped at the door as a thought struck him.
"Listen," he said cautiously, taking Horton by the arm, "haven't youthought of this? Why don't we just take off and start all over, orbitaround for a couple of days, pick a good hour, and then come backdown. That way we'll be starting all--"
But Horton was gazing at him reproachfully.
"They have a word for that, Trav," he said ominously, "they call it_vetching_. Worst crime a man can commit. Attempt to evade his stars.Equivalent almost to falsifying a horoscope. No siree, boy, for thatthey burn you very slowly. The first horoscope stands. All yoursubsequent actions, according to them, date from the original. You'lljust be bearing out the first diagnosis. You'll be a vetcher."
"Um," Travis said. "If they feel that way, why the heck do they evenlet us stay?"
"Shows you the way the system works. This is a bad day for everything.Coming as well as going. They'd never think of asking you to start atrip on a day like this. No matter who you are."
Travis collapsed into an old, vaguely Chippendale chair. His positionwas not that of a man sitting, it was that of a man dropped from agreat height.
"Well," Horton said. "So it goes. And listen, Trav, there was nothingI could do."
"Sure, Hort."
"I just want you to know I'm sorry. I know they've been kickin' youaround lately, and don't think I don't feel I owe you something. Afterall, if you hadn't--"
"Easy," Travis said, glancing at Dahlinger. But the kid's ears perked.
"Well," H o r t o n murmured, "just so's you know. Anyways I still gotfaith in you. And Unico will be in the same boat. If they get heretonight. So think about it. Let me see the old Pat Travis. Your luckhas to change sometime."
He clenched a fist, then left.
Travis sat for a long while in the chair. Dahlinger muttered somethingvery bitter about luck. Travis thought of telling him that it was notluck that had put them so close to Mert, but a very grim and expensiveliaison with a ferociously ugly Mapping Command secretary atAldebaran. She had told him that there was a ship in this area. Butthis news was not for Dahlinger's ears. And neither did he think itwise to explain to Dahlinger the thing he had done for Horton someyears ago. Young Dolly was not yet ripe. Travis sighed and lookedaround for a bed. To his amusement he noted a four poster in theadjoining room. He went in and lay down.
Gradually the dullness began to wear off. There was a resiliency inTravis unequalled, some said, by spring steel. He began to ponder waysand means.
There was always a way. There had to be a way. Somewhere in thecustoms of this planet there was a key--but he did not have the time.Unico would be in tonight, others would be down before the week wasout. And the one to land in two days, on the _good_ day, would get thecontract.
He twisted on the bed. Luck, luck, the hell with luck. If you wereborn with sense you were lucky and if a meteor fell on you, you wereunlucky, but most of the rest of it was even from there on out. So ifthe legend was to continue....
He became gradually aware of the clock in the ceiling.
In the ceiling?
He stared at it. The symbols and the time meant nothing, but the clockwas embedded flat in the ceiling above the bed, facing directly down.
He pondered that for a moment. Then he exploded with laughter. Byjing, of course. They would have to know what time the baby wasconceived. So all over Mert, in thousands of homes, there were clocksin the bedrooms, clocks in the ceilings, and wives peering anxiouslyupward murmured sweetly in their husbands' ears: 4:17, darling, 4:17and a half....
The roar of his mirth brought Dolly floundering in from the otherroom. Travis sprang from the bed.
"Listen, son," he bellowed, "luck be damned! You get back to the ship.Get Mapping Command to let you look at its files, find out everythingyou can about Mert. There's a key somewhere, boy, there's an out inthere someplace, if we look hard enough. Luck! Hah! Work, boy, work,there's a key!"
He shooed Dahlinger out of the room. The young man left dazedly, buthe had caught some of Travis' enthusiasm. Travis turned back to thebed feeling unreasonably optimistic. No way out, eh? Well by jingo,old Pat Travis would ride again, he could feel it in his bones.
A few moments later he had another feeling in his bones. This one wasmuch less delightful. He was pacing past a heavy drapery whensomething very hard and moving very fast struck him on the head.
* * * * *
The first thing Travis saw when he awoke was, unmistakably, the behindof a young woman.
His head was lying flat on the floor and the girl was sitting next tohim, her back toward him very close to his face. He stared at it for along while without thinking. The pain in his head was enormous, and hewas not used to pain, not any kind of pain. The whiskey men dranknowadays left no hangovers, and for a normal headache there wereinstantaneously acting pills, so Travis on the floor was unused topain. And though he was by nature a courageous man it took him a whileto be able to think at all, much less clearly.
Eventually he realized that he was lying on a very hard floor. Hisarms and legs were tightly bound. He investigated the floor. It wasbrick. It was wet. The dark ceiling dripped water in the flickeringlight from some source beyond the girl. The brick, the dripping water,the girl, all combined to make it completely unbelievable. If itwasn't for the pain he would have rolled over and gone to sleep. Butthe pain. Yes the pain. He closed his eyes and lay still, hurting.
When he opened his eyes again he was better. By jing, this wasridiculous. Not a full day yet on Mert and in addition to his othertroubles, now this. He did not feel alarmed, only downright angry.This business of the flickering light and being tied hand and foot wastoo impossible to be dangerous. He grunted feebly at the back of thegirl.
"Ho," he said. "Now what in the sweet name of Billy H. Culpepper isthis?"
The girl turned and looked down at him. She swiveled around on herhips and a rag-bound foot kicked him unconcernedly in the side. Forthe first time he saw the other two men behind her. There were two ofthem. The look of them was ridiculous.
The girl said something. It was a moment before he realized she wasspeaking in Mert, which he had to translate out of the Langkit behindhis ear.
"The scourge awakes," one of the men said.
"A joy. It was my thought that in the conjunction was done perhapsmurder."
"Poot. One overworries. And if death comes to this one, observe, willthe money be paid? Of a surety. But this is bizarre."
"Truly bizarre," the girl nodded. Then to make her point, "alsocurious, unique, unusual. My thought: from what la
nd he comes?"
"The cloth is rare," one of the men said, "observe with tight eyes theobject on his wrist. A many-symboled engine--"
"_My_ engine," the girl said positively. She reached down for hiswatch.
Travis jerked back. "Lay off there," he bawled in English, "youhipless--" The girl recoiled. He could not see her face but her tonewas puzzled.
"What language is this? He speaks with liquid."
The larger of the two men arose and came over to him.
"Speak again scourge. But first empty the mouth."
Travis glared at the man's feet, which were wrapped in dirty cloth andsmelt like the breezes blowing softly over fresh manure.
"Speak again? Speak again? Untie my