The Lost Star's Sea

by C. Litka

  03

  We quickly sold our goods and headed back to Bindare as soon as we all had our naps. And made the round again, and again, and again as the boom slowly tapered off. Boats could be seen on the lake again, catching fish - though whether their owners had returned or some enterprising prospectors had decided that there was gold dust to be made by appropriating the abandoned boats and selling fish was an open question. One by one, the abandoned barges that littered the strand, scraped together enough of a crew to sail home. Chasm Lake was now a rough-hewn town of some 5,000 people, half permanent, half down from the hills, and their digs for a bit of a spree. Beyond the ridge, Lormia Flat was just about as large, and the other shoulder of the mountain, Zin's Town, was half the size of Lormia Flats. We were now only one of a dozen barges bringing in supplies and taking back the first of the prospectors to go home, the ones who found nothing but dirt and bug bites, the ones that found a little, and spent it all in the bright lights of MorDae's Palace and its dozen other competitors, and, I suppose, the ones who came back with small bags of gold dust in their pouches and hidden in their dirty clothes, who'd made their packet and were going home rich. You usually couldn't tell these folks from the rest by design, since it had grown distinctly unhealthy to advertise your wealth. That made you a "mark" for all sorts of people, including people with springers and their own idea of how wealth should be shared. Yet, every once in awhile, we'd have a lucky one aboard who found enough to have had a great deal of fun at MorDae's Palace, and still had plenty to take home as well. Some had it all, others none at all.

  Faced with plenty of competition now, and few desertions on arrival, the Shadow Bird's business settled back to something like its normal level and our bonus pay settled back to regular wages. Still, the high tide of the gold rush had deposited hundreds of silver coins in our bank account, so we didn't kick.

  Indeed, I suspected that we continued to serve Chasm Lake only because Mom Mons was hoping her boys would show up sooner or later, rich or poor. As I hinted, the town and gold fields were getting a little more dangerous with every run we made. There was now enough gold above ground and in circulation that it began to pay to extract your share not from the ground, but from the ones who'd already dug it out. Tales of banditry, first whispered about, had grown to elaborate "old spaceer" tales of unsuccessful prospectors, hard bitten professional thieves and natives, turning to claim jumping, hold-ups and even murder. Prospectors were said to be banding together to protect their claims or paying for "protection" with a cut of their golden take. At first all this came from back in the hills and flats beyond the ridge, but stories of hold-ups at sword point or springer pistol edged ever closer to Chasm Lake. Even so, no police force was brought in to establish law and order, no civil guards from Quandadar to keep the peace.

  I asked the Skipper why and she just shrugged. 'The shadow lands are a land apart. The bright side usually doesn't mettle in the affairs of the shadow lands. Everything was settled long ago. You come to the shadows knowing you're on your own.'

  The bright lights and large population of Chasm Lake kept most of the banditry at bay. Still, as bright as the steam generated electric lights of the pleasure palaces were, as noisy and boisterous as their patrons were, there were shadows between the palaces and on the long, single muddy back street that wound its way under the towering pines, where bad things happened every round it seemed. Most everyone went out wearing a sword or one of those long barreled springer pistols on their hip and every establishment had its lounging "guards" armed with billy-clubs, swords, and springers to keep some pretense of order. Nevertheless, fights and brawls were common now, especially in the second tier pleasure palaces, that spilled out into the streets. Sword fights were still rare in town, but you never could be sure. And bodies turned up with slug holes in them as well, with enough frequency to warn the wise to keep to the bright lights. I'd known a few drift stations that approached this level of underlying menace, but none that exceeded it. Still, Captain DenMons was no longer in a hurry to leave the strand. We were still buying staple goods and selling them from the barge, wholesale and retail, still at a fair profit. And even when we'd sold out, she'd hang about for a few rounds - waiting for her boys to find their way back, though that was never said. KaRaya didn't complain since it gave her a great deal of free time to hang with her dream-come-true. She and Hissi would bound up to MorDae's to hang with DeVere around some card table. Hissi to play cards with great seriousness, and KaRaya mooning over DeVere.