Uncharted Stars

  “Bad. I am listed. No merchant will buy.”

  “So? Do we move out now or in the morning?” He leaned back against the wall of the cabin. “I don’t have anything to be attached. And I can always try the labor exchange.” His tone was dry and what lay behind it was the dull despair of any planet-bound spacer.

  “We do nothing—until I make one more visit—to-night.” Time, as it had been since the start of our venture, was our enemy. We must raise our port fees in a twenty-four hour period or we would have the ship base-locked and confiscated.

  “But not,” I continued, “as Murdoc Jern.” For I had this one small thread of hope left. If I were listed and suspect, then this ship and its crew of two—for Eet might well be overlooked as a factor in our company—would be watched and known. I would have to go in disguise. And already I was working out how that might be done.

  “Dark first, then the port passenger section—” I thought out loud. Ryzk shook his head.

  “You’ll never make it. Even a Guild runner could be picked up here. That entrance is the focus of every scanner in the place. They screen out all the undesirables when they are funneled through at landing.”

  “I shall chance it.” But I did not tell him how. My attempts at Eet’s art were still a secret. And all the advantages of any secret lie in the fact that it is not shared.

  We ate and Ryzk went back to his own cabin—I think to consider gloomily what appeared to be a black future. That he had any faith in me was now improbable. And I could not be sure he was not right.

  But I set up the mirror in my cabin and sat before it. Nothing as simple as a scar now. I must somehow put on another face. I had already altered my clothing, taking off my good tunic and donning instead the worn coveralls of an undercrew man to a tramp freighter.

  Now I concentrated on my reflection. What I had set up as a model was a small tri-dee picture. I could not hope to make my copy perfect, but if I could only create a partial illusion—

  It required every bit of my energy, and I was shaking with sheer fatigue when I could see the new face. I had the slightly greenish skin of a Zorastian, plus the large eyes, the show of fanged side teeth under tight-stretched, very thin, and near colorless lips. If I could hold this, no watcher could identify me as Murdoc Jern.

  “Not perfect.” I was shaken out of my survey of my new self by Eet’s comment. “The usual beginner’s reach for the outré. But in this case, possible, yes, entirely possible, since this is an inner planet with a big mingling of ship types.”

  Eet—I had turned to look—was no longer a pookha. Nor was he Eet. Instead there lay on my bunk a serpent shape with a narrow, arrow-shaped head. The kind of a life form it was I could not put name to.

  There was no question that Eet was going to accompany me. I could not depend now on my limited human senses alone, and what rested on my visit to Tacktile was more important than my pride.

  The reptile wound about my arm, coiled there as a massive and repulsive bracelet, its head a little upraised to view. And we were ready to go, but not openly down the ramp.

  Instead I descended through the core of the ship to a hatch above the fins, and in the dark felt for the notches set on one of those supports for the convenience of repair techs. So that we hit ground in the ship’s shadow.

  I had Ryzk’s ident disk, but hoped I would not have to show it. And luckily there was a liberty party from one of the big intersolar ships straggling across the field. As I had done when disembarking from our first port, I tailed this and we tramped in a group through the gate. Any reading on me would be reported as my own and I had the liberty of the port. But the scanners, being robos, would not report that my identity did not match my present outward appearance. Or so I hoped as I continued to tag along behind the spacers, who steered straight for the Off-port.

  This was not as garish and strident as that in which I had found Ryzk—at least on the main street. I had a very short distance to go, since the sharply peaked roof of Tacktile’s shop could be seen plainly from the gate. He appeared to depend upon the strange shape of his roof rather than a sign for advertisement.

  That roof was so sharply slanted that it formed a very narrow angle at the top and the eaves well overhung the sides. There was an entrance door so tall it seemed narrower than it was, but no windows. The door gave easily under my touch.

  Hock-locks were no mystery to me. Two counters on either side made a narrow aisle before me. Behind each were shelves along the wall, crowded with hock items, protected by a thin haze of force field. It would seem Tacktile conducted a thriving business, for there were four clerks in attendance, two on either side. One was of Terran blood, and there was a Trystian, his feathered head apparently in molt, as the fronds had a ragged appearance. The gray-skinned, warty-hided clerk nearest me I did not recognize, but beyond him was another whose very presence there was a jarring note.

  In the galaxy there is an elder race, of great dignity and learning—the Zacathans, of lizard descent. These are historians, archaeologists, teachers, scholars, and never had I seen one in a mercantile following before. But there was no mistaking the race of the alien, who stood in a negligent pose against the wall, fitting the strip of reader tape in his clawed hands into a recorder.

  The gray creature blinked sleepily at me, the Trystian seemed remote in some personal misery, and the Terran grinned ingratiatingly and leaned forward.

  “Greetings, Gentle Homo. Your pleasure is our delight.” He mouthed the customary welcome of his business. “Credits promptly to hand, no hard bargaining—we please at once!”

  I wanted to deal directly with Tacktile and that was going to be a matter of some difficulty—unless the Wyvern had Guild affiliations. If that were so, I could use the knowledge of the correct codes gained from my father to make contact. But I was going to have to walk a very narrow line between discovery and complete disaster. If Tacktile was honest, or wanted to protect a standing with the Patrol, the mere showing of what I carried would lead to denunciation. If he was Guild, the source of my gems would be of interest. Either way I was ripe for betrayal and must make my deal quickly. Yet I knew well the value of what I held and was going to lose no more of the profit than I was forced to.

  I gave the Terran what I hoped was a meaningful stare and out of the past I recalled what I hoped would work—unless the code had been changed.

  “By the six arms and four stomachs of Saput,” I mumbled, “it is pleasing I need now.”

  The clerk did not show any interest. He was either well schooled or wary.

  “You invoke Saput, friend. Are you then late from Jangour?”

  “Not so late that I am forgetful enough to wish to return. Her tears make a man remember—too much.” I had now given three of the Guild code phrases which in the old days had signified an unusual haul, for the attention of the master of the shop only. They had been well drilled into me when I had stood behind just such a counter in my father’s establishment.

  “Yes, Saput is none too kind to off-worlders. You will find better treatment here, friend.” He had placed one hand palm-down on the counter. With the other he pushed out a dish of candied bic plums, as if I must be wooed as a buyer in one of the Veep shops uptown.

  I picked up the top plum, laying the smallest of the greenstones in its place. A quick flicker of eyes told him what I had done. He withdrew the dish, putting it under the counter, where I knew a small vis-com would pick up the sight for Tacktile.

  “You have, friend?” he continued smoothly. I laid down one of the lesser zorans from my unhappy Lorgal trade.

  “It is flawed.” He gave it a quick professional examination. “But as it is the first zoran we have taken in in some time, well, we shall do our best for you. Hock or sale?”

  “Sale.”

  “Ah, we can hock but not buy. For sale you must deal with the master. And sometimes he is not in the mood. You would do better at hock, friend. Three credits—”

  I shook my head as might a stupid
crewman set for a higher price. “Four credits—outright sale.”

  “Very well, I shall ask the master. If he says no, it will not even be hock, friend, and you will have lost all.” He allowed his finger to hover over the call button set in the counter as if awaiting some change in my mind. I shook my head and with a commiserating shrug he pressed the button.

  Why the elaborate byplay I did not know. Except for me there was no one else in the shop, and surely the other clerks were equally well versed in the code. The only answer must be that they feared some type of snoop ray, at least in the public portion of the shop.

  A brief spark of light flashed by the button and the clerk motioned me toward the back of the shop. “Don’t say you weren’t warned, friend. Your stone is not enough to interest the master, and you shall lose all the way.”

  “I will see.” I passed the other clerks, neither of whom looked at me. As I came to the end of the aisle a section of wall swung in and I was in Tacktile’s office.

  It did not surprise me to see the dish of sticky plums on his desk, the greenstone already laid out conspicuously in a pool of light. He raised his gargoyle head, his deep-set eyes searching me, and I was glad that he lacked that other sense given Wyvern females and could not read my thoughts.

  “You have more of these?” He came directly to the point.

  “Yes, and better.”

  “They are listed stones, with a criminal history?”

  “No, received in fair trade.”

  He rapped his blunted talons on the desk top, almost uneasily. “What is the deal?”

  “Four thousand credits, on acceptance of value.”

  “You are one bereft of wits, stranger. These on the open market—”

  “At auction they would bring five times that amount.” He did not offer me a seat, but I took the stool on the other side of the desk.

  “If you want your twenty thousand, let them go at auction,” he returned. “If they are indeed clean stones, there is no reason not to.”

  “There is a reason.” I moved two fingers in a sign.

  “So that is the way of it.” He paused. “Four thousand—well, they can go off world. You want cash?”

  I gave an inward sigh of relief. My biggest gamble had paid off—he had accepted me as a Guild runner. Now I shook my head. “Deposit at the port.”

  “Well, very well.” Eet’s words were in my mind: “He is too afraid not to be honest with us.”

  Tacktile pulled a recorder to him. “What name?”

  “Eet,” I told him. “Port credit, four thousand, to one Eet. To be delivered on a voice order repeating,” and I gave him code numerals.

  I had come to Lylestane with high hopes. I was getting away with a modest return of port fees and supplies, and the danger of making a contact which could alert my enemies.

  Now I produced the greenstones, and the Wyvern rapidly separated them. I could tell by his examination that he had some knowledge of gems. Then he nodded and gave the final signal to the recorder.

  I retraced my path through the shop and now none of the clerks noticed me. The word had been passed I was to be invisible. When I reached the outside Eet spoke.

  “It might be well to drink to your good fortune at the Purple Star.” And so out of the ordinary was that suggestion that I was startled into breaking stride. It would be far wiser and better to get back to the ship, to prepare for take-off and rise off world before we got into any more difficulty. Yet Eet’s suggestions were, as I well knew from the past, never to be disregarded.

  “Why?” I asked and kept on my way, the port lights directly ahead.

  “That Zacathan has been planted in Tacktile’s.” Eet returned as smoothly as if he were reading it all from a tape. “He is hunting for information. Tacktile has it. The Wyvern is to meet someone at the Purple Star within the hour and it is of vast importance.”

  “Not to us,” I denied. The last thing to do was to become involved in some murky deal, especially one with the Guild—

  “Not Guild!” Eet cut into my train of thought. “Tacktile is not of the Guild, though he deals with them. This is something else again. Piracy—or Jack raiding—”

  “Not for us!”

  “You are listed. If the Patrol has done this, you can perhaps buy your way out with pertinent information.”

  “As we did before? I do not think we can play that game twice. It would have to be information worth a lot—”

  “Tacktile was excited, tempted. He visualized a fortune,” Eet continued. “Take me into the Purple Star and I can discover what excites him. If you are listed, what kind of future voyages can you expect? Let us buy our freedom. We are still far from seeking the zero stones.”

  The source of the zero stones had receded from my mind to a half-remembered dream, smothered by the ever-present need to provide us with a living. All my instincts told me that Eet proposed running us headlong into a meteor storm, but the gamble might go two ways. Supposing he could mind-read a meeting between the Wyvern and some mysterious second party—the affair must be important if the Zacathans had seen fit to plant an agent in the shop. And having a drink in a spacers’ bar would add to my disguise as an alien crewman who had made a successful deal at the hock-lock.

  “Back four buildings,” Eet dictated. And when I turned I saw the purple five-pointed light.

  It was one of the better-class drinking places and the door attendant eyed me questioningly as I entered with all the boldness I could muster. I thought he was going to bar me, but if that was so he changed his mind and stepped aside.

  “Take the booth to the right under the mask of Iuta,” Eet ordered. There was another beyond that but the curtain had been dropped to give its occupants privacy. I settled in and punched the robo-server on the table for the least expensive drink in the house—it was all I could afford and I did not intend to drink it anyway. The lights were dim and the occupants very mixed, but more were of Terran descent than alien. I had no sight of Tacktile. Eet moved on my arm so that his arrow head now pointed to the wall between me and the curtained booth.

  “Tacktile has arrived,” he announced. “Through a sliding wall panel. And his contact is already there. They are scribo-writing.”

  I could hear the murmur of voices and guessed that those behind me were discussing some ordinary matter while their fingers were busy with the scribos, which could communicate impervious to any snoop ray. But if their thoughts were intent upon their real business, that dodge would not hide their secrets from Eet.

  “It is a Jack operation,” my companion reported. “But Tacktile is turning it down. He is too wary—rightly so—the victims are Zacathans.”

  “Some archaeological find, then—”

  “True. One of great value apparently. And this is not the first one to be so Jacked. Tacktile says the risk is too great, but the other one says it has been set up with much care. There is no Patrol ship within light-years, it will be easy. The Wyvern is holding fast, telling the other to try elsewhere. He is going now.”

  I raised my glass but did not sip the brew it contained.

  “Where and when is the raid?”

  “Co-ordinates for the where—he thought of them while talking. No when.”

  “No concrete proof then for the Patrol,” I said sourly, and spilled most of my glass’s contents on the floor.

  “No,” Eet agreed with me. “But we do have the coordinates and a warning to the intended victims—”

  “Too risky. They might already have been raided and then what? We are caught suspiciously near a Jack raid.”

  “They are Zacathans,” Eet reminded me. “The truth cannot be hid from them, not with one telepath contacting another.”

  “But you do not know when—it might be now!”

  “I do not believe so. They have failed with Tacktile. They must now hunt another buyer, or they may feel they can eventually persuade him. You took a gamble on Sororis. Perhaps this is another for you, with a bigger reward at the end. Get Z
acathan backing and your listing will be forgotten.”

  I got up and went out on the noisy street, the port my goal. In spite of my intentions it would seem that Eet could mold my future, for reason and logic were on his side. Listed, I no longer had a trade. But suppose I did manage to warn some Zacathan expedition of a Jack raid. Not only would it mean that I would gain some very powerful patrons, but the Zacathans dealt only in antiquities and the very great treasure the stranger had used to tempt Tacktile might well be zero stones!

  “Just so.” There was a smug satisfaction in Eet’s thought. “And now I would advise a speedy rise from this far from hospitable planet.”

  I jogged back to the ship, wondering how Ryzk would accept this latest development. To go up against a Jack raid was no one’s idea of an easy life. More often it was quick death. Only, with Zacathans involved, the odds were the least small fraction inclined to our side.

  IX

  Below us the ball of the planet was a sphere of Sirenean amber, not the honey-amber or the butter-amber of Terra, but ocher very lightly tinged with green. The green areas grew, assumed the markings of seas. There were no very large land masses but rather sprays of islands and archipelagoes, with only two providing possible landing sites.

  Ryzk was excited. He had protested the co-ordinates we had brought back from the Purple Star, saying they were in a sector completely off any known map. Now I think all his Free Trader instinct awoke when he realized that we had homed in on an uncharted world.

  We orbited with caution, but there was no trace of any city, no sign that this was anything but an empty world. However, we decided at last that the same tactics used at Sororis would be best here—that Eet and I should leave the ship in orbit and make an exploratory trip in the converted LB. And since it seemed logical that the two largest land masses were the most probable sites for any archaeological dig, I made a choice of the northern.

  Dawn was the time we descended. Ryzk, having experimented with the LB, had added some refinements to his original adaptations, making it possible to switch from automatics to hand controls. He had run through the drill patiently with me until he thought I could master the craft. Though I did not have the training of a spacer pilot, I had used flitters since I was a child and the techniques of the LB were not too far from that skill.