Uncharted Stars

  It seemed so hopeless when I thought it all out that I could see no possible counter on our part. Had we one of the zero stones we might—so much had I come to accept the unusual powers of those strange gems-have a fighting chance. Eet—if he were not dead—or dying—might just—

  I felt my way back to that small body, gathered it carefully up so that Eet’s head rested against me, and put my good arm protectingly around it. I thought now that I no longer felt that small stirring of a heartbeat. There was no answer to my mind-call. So there was good reason to believe that Eet was dead. And in that moment I forgot all my annoyance at his interference in my life, the way he had taken over the ordering of my days. Perhaps I was one who needed such dependence upon a stronger will. There had been my father, then Vondar Ustle, then Eet—

  Only I would not accept that this was the end. If Eet was dead, then Ryzk would pay for that death. I had thought of the aid of the stone, and the aid of Eet, and both of them were gone. What remained was myself, and I was not ready to say I was finished.

  I had always believed that I was no esper. Certainly no such talent was apparent in me before I met Eet. He had touched my mind for communication and I had learned that use from him. He had at one uncomfortable time given me mental contact with another human in order to prove our innocence to a Patrol officer. Then he had taught me to use the hallucinatory change and I had been the one to discover that the zero stone could bring about an almost total change.

  But Eet—he was either dead or very close to it. I had neither Eet nor the stone. I was hurt, how badly I could not tell, and I was a prisoner. There was only one small—very small—spark of hope left—the Zacathan.

  He was normally esper, as was Eet. Could I possibly reach him now? Make some appeal?

  I stared into a dark which I hoped would not be my portion all the rest of my life, but in my mind I pictured the face of Zilwrich as I had seen it last. And I strove to hold that face in mind, not now for the purpose of making it mine, but rather as a homing point for my thought-seek. And I aimed, not a coherent thought, but a signal for attention, a cry for help.

  Then—I touched! It was as if I had put tip of finger to a falder leaf which had instantly coiled away from contact with my flesh. Then—it returned.

  But I was racked with disappointment. With Eet mind-touch had been clear, as it had been with the Zacathan when the mutant was present. This was a jumble of a language I did not know, poured at me in a wealth of impressions too fast for me to sort and understand, forming a sickening, chaotic whirl, so that I must retreat, drop touch.

  Eet was the connecting link I must have. Otherwise I could only try until that whirl of alien thought drove my brain into mindlessness. I considered the chances. I could stay prisoner here for whatever purpose Ryzk had in mind. Or I could try the Zacathan again. And it was not in me to accept the helplessness of that first choice.

  So, warily, as a man might seek a path across a quaking bog ready to swallow him up in a thousand hungry mud mouths, I sent out once more the mind-seek. But this time I thought my message—slowly, impression by impression, and doggedly held to what I had to convey as the stream of the alien mind lapped over it. I did not try to tell Zilwrich anything, as I would have “talked” to Eet. I merely thought out over and over again what I would have him know, letting it lie for him to pick up as he could. Though I feared my slow channel was as unintelligible to him as his frighteningly swift flow was to me.

  Once, twice, three times, a fourth, I thought through what I made as my plea. Then I could hold no longer. The pain of my body was as nothing compared to the pain now filling my mind. And I lost contact as well as consciousness, just as I had when we had snapped into hyper.

  It was as if I were being pricked over and over again by the sharp point of a needle. I stirred under that torment, which was small and far away at first, and then became so much the greater, more insistent. And I fought to remain in the safety of nothingness. Prick—the summons to what I did not want continued.

  “Eet?” But it was not Eet—no—

  “Wait—”

  Wait for what, who? I did not care. Eet? No, Eet was dead. And I would be dead. Death was not caring, not needing to care, or feel, or think—And I wanted just that—no more stirring of life, which hurt both mind and body. Eet was dead, and I was dead, or would be if the pricking would only stop and leave me in peace.

  “Awake—”

  Awake? I thought it was “wait.” Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered—

  “Awake!”

  A shouting in my head. I hurt and that hurting came from outside. I turned my head from side to side, as if to shake out the voice in my mind.

  “Keep awake!” screamed that order and the pain it caused me aroused me further from my stupor. I was moaning a little, whimpering through the dark a plea to be let alone, left to the death which was rest.

  “Keep awake!”

  Hammering inside my skull. Now I could hear my own whimpering plaint and was unable to stop. But also with the pain came an awareness which was a barrier against my slipping back into the nothingness.

  “Awake—hold—”

  Hold what? My rolling head? There was nothing to hold.

  Then I sensed, not words echoing through my bruised mind, but something else—a stiffening, a support against which my feeble thoughts could find root and sustenance. And this continued until I stared wide-eyed into the dark, as much another person inwardly as I had been outwardly with the hallucinations born of the zero stone. For only a limited time, somehow I knew, would that support me. And during that time I must make any attempt I could to help myself.

  XV

  Somehow I got to my feet, still holding Eet against me with my good arm, my other hanging uselessly by my side. I was ready to move, but where, against what—or whom? Realizing I was still helplessly caught in this pocket of dark, I was ready to slump again into a stupor.

  “Wait—be ready—” There was a sense of strain in that message, as if he who sent it were making a vast effort.

  Well, I was waiting and ready, but for how long? And in this dark time seemed forever and ever, not measured by any standard I had known.

  Then came sound, a small grating, and I knew a leap of heart—I was not blind after all! There was a line of light to my right. I lurched in that direction as that line grew from a slit into an opening I could squeeze through—though I was blinking against the discomfort of light.

  I brought out and up against the wall of the well which was the core of the ship, too spent for a moment to turn and see who had freed me. But leaning one shoulder against the wall, I was able to face about.

  Zilwrich, whom I had last seen lying on the pallet, supported himself with his two arms rigid against the floor, clearly at the end of the flutter of strength which had made him crawl to the door of my cell. He lifted his head with manifest effort.

  “You—are—free—To you—the rest—”

  Free but weaponless, and as near the end of my resources as the Zacathan, though not yet finished. Somehow I was able to lay Eet on the floor, get my good arm about Zilwrich, and half drag the Zacathan back to the bed he had crawled from. Then I stumbled out, picked up the mutant, and brought him back, nursed against me, though no tending would return life to that small body.

  “Tell me.” I used the Basic speech, glad to be able to relinquish touch with that bewildering alien mind. “What happened?”

  “Ryzk”—Zilwrich spoke slowly as if each word came hard—“would go to Lylestane—return me—the treasure—”

  “And turn us in,” I ended, “probably as accomplices in Guild plotting.”

  “He—wishes—reinstatement. I did not know you had returned alive—until your mind-seek. He said—you died—when we went into hyper.”

  I glanced down at the limp body pressed to mine. “One of us did.”

  I might be free inside the ship, but that I could do anything to change the course of events I doubted. Ryzk would retu
rn us to Lylestane and we—I—would find the balance of justice heavily weighted against me. Not only were circumstances largely in the pilot’s favor, but under the scanner they would have out of me all that the zero stone meant. And—the zero stone!

  Eet had concealed it somewhere in the LB. As far as I knew Ryzk did not suspect it. If I could get hand on it again—I was not sure how I could use it as a weapon. But that it had possiblities of this sort there was no doubt. The LB-but Eet had hidden the stone and Eet was dead.

  The bowl—if I had that I could trace the zero stone by the fire of the one inlaid in it.

  “The treasure—where is it?”

  “In the lock safe.” Zilwrich’s eyes were on me with piercing keenness, but he was ready enough with that information.

  The lock safe—If Ryzk had sealed that with his own thumb, I had no chance of getting the bowl. The compartment would remain closed until he chose to release it.

  “No.” It would seem that like Eet the Zacathan could readily read my mind, but that did not matter. “No—it is sealed to me.”

  “He allowed that?”

  “He had to. What is this thing you must have—that the bowl will bring you nearer to—a weapon?”

  “I do not know if it can be a weapon. But it is a source of power beyond our reckoning. Eet hid it in the LB; the bowl will find it for me.”

  “Help me—to the lock safe.”

  It was a case of the lame leading the crippled. We made a hard journey of a short space. But I was able to steady the alien while he activated the thumb lock and I scooped out the bowl. He held it tightly to him as I guided and supported him back to his bed.

  Before he released the bowl to me he turned it around in his hands, examining it closely. Finally one of his finger talons tapped the tiny zero stone.

  “This you seek.”

  “We have long sought it, Eet and I.” There was no use in concealing the truth any longer. We might not make the voyage we had planned, going out among the uncharted stars in search of an ancient world which was the source of the stones, but it was the here and now which mattered most—the finding of the one Eet had hidden.

  “It is a map, and you hunt the treasure you believe lies at its end?”

  “More than such treasure as you found in the tomb.” And, as tersely as I could, I told him the story of the zero stones—the one in my father’s ring, those of the caches on the unknown planet, that which Eet had secreted, and how we had used it since.

  “I see. Take this then.” Zilwrich held out the bowl. “Find your hidden stone. It would seem that we were on the edge of a vast discovery when we uncovered this—but one which would unleash perils such as a man thinks twice about loosing.”

  I held the bowl to me as I had held Eet, using my shoulder against the wall to keep erect, shambling from Zilwrich’s cabin to the ladder, down which I fell rather than climbed, to reach the LB’s berth. The last steps of that journey were such a drain that I could hardly take them.

  Then I was back in the craft which had served us so well. I fought to keep moving, holding the bowl a little away from ne now, watching the zero stone. It glimmered and then broke into vivid life. But it was hard to see how I could use it as a guide, since there seemed no variation in that light. However, I must try.

  I moved jerkily, first to the tail, without any change I could detect in the degree of emanation from the bowl stone. But as I came up the right side of the small ship on return the bowl moved in my grasp, fought my hold. I released it. As the zero stone, on its first awakening, had pulled me across space to the derelict ship where others of its kind lay, so did the bowl cross, to hang suspended against a part of the casing. I jerked and tore at the rim of the casing, hoping Eet had not been able to seal in the stone too tightly. As my nails broke and my fingers were lacerated by the sharp edging I began to despair. One-handed there was little I could do to force it.

  But I continued to fight, and at last I must have touched what lock was there, for a whole section of panel fell down and I saw the brilliant blaze of the large stone within. The bowl snapped to meet it until stone touched stone, and I did not try to part them. With the bowl I began to retrace my way.

  When I subsided beside Zilwrich, the bowl on the floor between us, he looked at the gems but seemed as content as I at that moment to do no more. Not only was I too weak to prod my body to more effort, but my thoughts were dulled, slow. Now that I had found the second stone, I could not see any way to make use of it against Ryzk. It seemed that, having achieved this one small success, I was finished.

  Eet lay on the edge of the Zacathan’s pallet and one of the alien’s scaled hands rested on the mutant’s head.

  “This one is not dead—”

  I was startled out of my lethargy. “But—”

  “There is still the spark of life, very low, very dim, but there.”

  I was no medico, and even if I had been I would have had no knowledge to deduce the mutant’s hurts. My own helplessness was an added burden. Eet would die and there was nothing I could do—

  Or was there?

  For a little beyond Eet’s head was the bowl, the stones close-welded together. The zero stone was power. It had the power to turn us into the seeming of others and hold that seeming. And I had been able to turn Eet into a cat because I had sprung that change on him when he did not expect it. Could I will, not change, but will life itself into the mutant’s body?

  As long as there was a faint spark left, I must try.

  I took the left hand on my limp and useless arm with my right, moved the numb palm to rest on the stones, not caring if I would be burned. At least I would not feel it. The right I put on Eet’s head. I set my mind to the task, summoning, not some strange disguise for my companion, but rather the sight of him as he was alive. So did I fight my battle—with mind, with a hand which will always bear the scars, with my determination, against death itself, or what Eet’s kind knew as the end of existence. And I strove with the power passing through me to find that spark Zilwrich said existed, to fan it into flame.

  The stones made a fire to fill one’s sight, shutting out the cabin, the Zacathan, even Eet, but I continued to hold the image of the live Eet in my mind. My eyes which had been useless in the dark of the cell were now blinded again, by light. But I held fast in spite of that in me which cringed, and cried, and tried to flee.

  Nor was I truly conscious of why I fought that battle, save that it was one which I must face to the end. I was at last done, my seared hand lying palm up on my knee, the bowl and stone hidden from me by a fold of cloth. Eet no longer lay limp, with the semblance of death, but sat on his haunches, his paw-hands folded over his middle, his stance one of alert life, of complete restoration.

  I caught communication, or the edge of it, between the Zacathan and my companion. But so difficult was it now for me to hold to any thought that it was more like hearing a murmur or whisper from across a room.

  Eet moved with all his old agility, bringing out the aid kit, seeing to my hand, giving me also a shot to counteract the hurt in my arm. But to me this had little or no meaning. I watched the Zacathan agree to something Eet suggested and the mutant carry the bowl out of the room—into hiding again, I supposed. But all I wanted was sleep.

  Hunger awoke me. I was still in the Zacathan’s cabin. If Ryzk had paid him a visit during the time I slept he had not seen fit to return me to custody. But that I had slept worried me vaguely. There was much to be done and I had failed to do it.

  Eet whisked in, almost as if my waking had sent him some signal. He carried in his mouth as he came two of those tubes of E-rations. And seeing them, for a second or two I forgot all else. But when I had squeezed one into my mouth and savored the first few swallows (though normally I would not have considered them appetizing) I had a question:

  “Ryzk?”

  “We can do nothing while in hyper,” Eet reported. “And he has found his own amusement. It seems that this ship was not thoroughly searched when
it was taken in as a smuggler. Somehow Ryzk uncovered a supply of vorx and is now having sweet dreams in his cabin.”

  Vorx was potent enough to give anyone dreams—though whether they were sweet was another question. It was not only an intoxicating drink, but so acted on Terran bodies that it was also hallucinatory. That Ryzk had been searching the ship did not surprise me either. The boredom of space travel would set any man immured within these walls during hyper passage to do such to relieve his tedium. And Ryzk might have known this was a smuggler sold after confiscation.

  “He had help—” Eet commented. There was such a bubbling renewal of well-being in him as made me envious, perhaps tired of being on the edge wash of such energy.

  “From you?”

  “From our distinguished colleague.” Eet nodded to the Zacathan.

  “It would seem that Ryzk’s weakness is drink,” Zilwrich agreed. “While it is wrong of anyone to play upon another’s weakness, there are times when such a fall from Full Grace is necessary. I deemed that I might take on error-load for once in this way. We need Ryzk’s room rather than his company.”

  “If we come out of hyper in the Lylestane system we shall be in Patrol territory,” I replied a little sourly.

  “It is possible to come out and go in again before a challenge of boarding can be delivered,” Zilwrich returned. “I have a duty to report the raid on our camp, that is true. But I have also a duty to those who sent my party there. This map is such a find as we come upon perhaps once in a thousand years. If we can find a clue to the location of the planet it marks, then a scouting trip thither at this time means more than arousing the law as to what has happened in one raid.”

  “But Ryzk is pilot. He will not agree to go off known charts. And if he’s made up his mind to turn us in—”

  “Off the charts,” repeated the Zacathan thoughtfully. “Of that we cannot be sure as yet. Look—”

  He produced a tri-dee projector which I knew to be part of the equipment of the control cabin. At a push of his finger there flashed on the wall a blowup of a star chart. Being no astro-navigator, I could not read it to any real purpose, save that I could make out the position of stars and sight the coded co-ordinates for hyper jumps under each.