Derelict For Trade

by Andre Norton

  His ears caught the sound of movement, no more than a scrape, but Tooe swiftly followed up her whistle with another pattern, then visibly relaxed when from the shadows came a rapid clicking noise.

  She gestured quietly to Dane, pushed off, and rocketed into the dark hole from which the fog was drifting. As they flew through the tunnel, Dane heard a faint hiss and saw the source of the fog: a leaking pipe. This must be a very old part of the Spin Axis, he thought; and indeed, as they went on, there were more and more leaks.

  Occasionally Tooe would stop and whistle, or call, or tap some kind of signal, and on receiving a signal—usually from unseen watchers—she’d go on. At first Dane tried to memorize the trail, but had to give up before long. At the end, he was fairly certain they had doubled back.

  He was about to ask what was going on; then an unsettling thought occurred to him: he’d been so busy wondering whether she could be trusted, he’d forgotten how Tooe must be feeling, taking a stranger to the place where her group hid out.

  After what he’d heard over the last couple of days, Dane had a pretty good idea how life was in the Spin Axis. In the mostly abandoned space away from the area where the mysterious and sinister Shver Deathguard claimed, there were plenty of hidey-holes where various gangs lived, and none of them particularly liked or trusted the others. Sometimes there were fights—bad ones, since there were no Monitors to stop them. Mostly, though, the gangs seemed to exist in a kind of uneasy truce, lest the authorities suddenly decide to swoop down with heavy weapons and flame the place clean.

  There were those groups that made their living from theft, or worse things. Tooe’s gang bartered.

  "Nunku find we young," Tooe had said. "Teach us! We learn data, we learn machines, we trade. Get away from Spinner. I Tooe, go to space, me," she’d said proudly.

  So Dane resigned himself to following a torturous path to Nunku’s hideout—when a piercing whistle echoed up from somewhere.

  Tooe caught hold of a thin cable and stopped.

  The sound came again, a high, weird note dropping down to another. Dane felt his neck bristle, and he flexed his hands. Now his danger sense was going into hyper—and from the looks of Tooe, it wasn’t just his imagination.

  The little Rigelian darted to one of the adits, her crest flattened out in anger mode.

  "That our call," she said quickly. "Danger—Shver hunt!"

  "Shver hunt?" Dane repeated.

  Tooe paid him no attention. She was very still, head angled to listen.

  The sound came again, fainter, and this time Tooe sprang to a half-blocked shaft, and sped up inside.

  She was going off to the rescue, with no weapons, no aid but Dane. Cursing himself for not having gotten a sleeprod, at least, he pushed after for a few seconds, his mind rapidly making and discarding plans.

  A sharp turn in another old shaft and the Spin Axis opened up around them again, into a complicated space filled with angular cargo pods lashed to a confusion of pipes and tiedowns. Here too was the fog, and the air was cold. The whistle was suddenly very near. Tooe flicked out her skinny arm, and she and Dane watched as a squat being scooted by, ricocheting in terror-inspired grace off the cargo pods. As the victim disappeared from sight, there was a rumble of deep voices, and eight or ten Shver appeared, wearing some kind of jet-packs. In the dim lighting Dane could see that these Shver were young, and wealthy, and they all

  carried vicious-looking force blades. Anger burned inside him: eight heavyweights against a small being scarcely larger than Tooe!

  "You stay." Tooe’s voice was reedy with fear. "My nest-mate Momo, I help—"

  "Wait," Dane murmured. "Can you get us ahead of them somehow?"

  She whipped around and stared after Momo and the chasers, as if figuring a vector on the probable path. Then she nodded, her crest flicking into hope mode.

  "Then get me there ahead, and we’ll have a little fun, if I’ve figured this right," Dane said, scanning the pipes running through the chamber.

  Dane never did figure out how she did it; perhaps the adrenaline of the chase effaced the memory, but in a very few minutes, after a dizzying flight through interstices he would have sworn were too small for him, they were back in the foggy tunnel. He could hear the whistle of terror from Momo coming closer, and, fainter, the brutal laughter of the pursuing Shver. Dane pulled himself along as fast as he dared, scanning the tunnel walls until he spotted what he’d hoped for: the leaking pipe from which the fog was billowing. Fortunately, it was inert cryo again, for there was suddenly no time left as Momo rocketed past and, with no further warning, the Shver were upon them.

  The bulky beings stopped, nonplussed. He saw them squint, trying to see through the fog veiling him and Tooe. Then the one in the lead smiled, evidently seeing easy prey. It jetted forward slowly, waving the others back, its force knife humming shrilly as it pointed the weapon square at Dane’s head.

  Dane didn’t move, and noted approvingly that Tooe didn’t either. He flexed the toes of his right foot very slightly, checking that his foot was still firmly hooked under a cable.

  "Vanish you, or be prey," the foremost Shver growled, his posture arrogant.

  Dane didn’t answer. Instead, as the Shver lunged at him, he twisted down and aside by pulling up his right leg, and, as he rocketed down, chopped savagely at the leaking pipe with his left hand and yanked

  sideways on it with his right, pushing hard against the tunnel wall with all the strength in his legs.

  With a shrill screech of tortured metal the pipe ruptured and the liquid nitrogen jetted out straight at his attacker, the roar of its release suddenly augmented by a basso scream of agony from the Shver.

  "Now!" shouted Dane, and they flew off down the tunnel. As they swung around a corner he looked back and bile suddenly spurted into his throat. Out of the boiling fog that veiled the confused panic of the Shver a small object looped toward them: a severed hand, frost covered, the force knife still humming in its rigid grasp. As he watched, frozen with a mixture of horror and triumph, the hand hit the bulkhead a few feet away and shattered into dust.

  Dane felt a tug at his arm. "Trounced rascal knaves, you," she crowed; then her crest flattened as she saw his expression. She shook her head. "Won’t bleed, him. Saw freeze wound once—lots of time, medic fix."

  Dane pushed off and followed her, shocked less by the sight than the violence his actions had revealed in him. Then he thought of the Ariadne. What if the Queen had been attacked? The thought made him feel a little better, but he was still subdued when they caught up with Momo.

  The little being was a kind of humanoid Dane had never seen before. He was small, squat, and his skin was red— almost crimson; Dane wondered what influence in his environment could have created that. At first Momo was sobbing, and Tooe made consoling noises. When Momo was able to gulp back his tears, he and Tooe held a rapid conversation in Kanddoyd, snapping and tapping their fingers in complicated rhythms to accentuate their speech.

  Dane followed along behind, doing his best to follow the flow of words. The Kanddoyd they spoke seemed highly idiomatic, or else had been adapted over time for the benefit of physiologies different from Kanddoyd.

  Suddenly they both turned to Dane, and Momo said in Kanddoyd-accented Terran, "Gracious and forever gratitude to Terran visitor, my honor to give to you." He lifted both hands to his head and covered his eyes with his thumbs, flickering his fingers in a gesture which Dane recognized as an analogue for the respectful clacking of Kanddoyd mandibles.

  "Glad to help," he said, feeling awkward.

  "We conduct honored rescuer to Nunku," Momo said.

  Dane bit his lip. Wasn’t that where Tooe had intended to take him all along? For a moment his suspicions rose again, to disappear when he realized that the two were taking him on a straight route, rather than the circuitous one Tooe had embarked on at first.

  Warm air and the deep droning of vast engines, more a vibration than a sound, indicated they were somewhere in the vicin
ity of the great motors for the ventilators that kept the air moving in the Spin Axis. The air smelled slightly metallic, but was fresh enough, and unlike the still air in the abandoned storage areas, this ruffled gently across his skin, making it clear that someone had seen to circulation.

  They passed a jumble of ancient hull metal and other discarded parts of spaceships. Twice Tooe made calling sounds, but there were no answers this time. Warnings, Dane thought. Before, she was signaling for permission to enter other gangs’ territories, and now she was letting her own gang know she was coming.

  I wonder if the signal says anything about me, he thought as they floated down into a vast circular room, well lit from an astonishing variety of lighting equipment scavenged from several centuries’ choices of styles.

  At once eight or ten beings appeared, ricocheting down with bizarre grace from the network of catwalks and cables stretching everywhere, all of them raggedly dressed in ill-fitting spacer castoffs. They represented biologies from an astonishingly wide range of systems, all humanoid, but that was the only common bond.

  The one that drew the eye was a very weird creature indeed. Her head seemed much too large for her body, but Dane realized after a second look that her head was normal in size. The thin, strangely elongated body inside the tattered old robe was not. It was as if a child’s body had been stretched out to ten or twelve feet. Such a person would have to live in free fall, Dane realized as Tooe eagerly drew him forward. She could never stand on her own in normal gravity.

  "Dane Thorsen, here Nunku," Tooe said.

  A pair of wide china-blue eyes regarded Dane gravely from under a tangle of lank light-brown hair. "We thank thee for thy help," she said softly.

  Tooe and Momo then launched into a stream of talk, mixing together words from six or more languages. Mostly they spoke Kanddoyd, but here and there were Terran words. At the end, there was even one Shver: "Golm."

  Dane looked up sharply, and the others reacted with startled glances.

  Dane felt his neck and ears burning. "Sorry," he said.

  Nunku shook her head slightly. "Clan Golm," she murmured. "Thou knowest of them?"

  Dane shrugged, feeling stupid. "It’s just that there was one of them—called himself the Jheel—who... made things difficult for my shipmates," he finished lamely.

  Tooe whistled, then said, "Golm Jheels, all three, bad, Zoral very very bad. Zoral hunt Momo," she finished.

  Nunku said, "It is an old clan, and powerful. The young ones do not act worthy of trust. They want more power."

  Dane said carefully, "The Jheel I mean works in the Terran Trade communications office. Do you know something about this Jheel?"

  Another fast conversation in mixed Rigelian, Kanddoyd, and other languages, this time with other figures coming forward to participate.

  At last Nunku nodded, and it was Momo who said, "Thou art my rescuer. I trade data. What needest thou?"

  Dane sighed. How to explain? Ought he to explain?

  He looked from Tooe to Momo to Nunku, saw them waiting expectantly. He had come because Tooe wanted him to; she kept talking about Nunku and the others like. like he would the crew of the Queen. Like they were family.

  "Well, here’s what’s going on," he began.

  13

  Craig Tau ruffled Omega’s ears and stroked the sides of the cat’s muzzle, smiling at the resultant loud purr. Alpha headbutted his other hand, and he knelt down and for a time did nothing but pet the cats.

  It felt good to empty his mind, to just play with the animals. They lived so much in the moment, without worrying about missing ships, or lying rumors, or vanishing credit—or personal problems among their crewmates.

  A scratch on his arm brought his attention round to Sinbad, who batted him again. Now he had three cats to stroke. He reached down and scratched Sinbad’s wedge-shaped head, watching with a grin as the notched ears went flat and the eyes narrowed with pleasure. Sinbad’s rusty-sounding purr was twice as loud as the others’.

  "Well, old friend, what should I do?" Tau addressed the cat.

  Sinbad licked his lips and purred louder.

  "That’s what I thought," Tau said with a wry laugh. "Keep my mouth shut."

  Alpha jumped up onto his knee and tried to settle into a loaf despite the microgravity. Claws pricked through Tau’s trouser leg as the cat pulled itself down into his lap, making him wince. He gently lifted the cat down, hooking his calves under his seat to keep from drifting forward off the chair. He threw a couple of the toys he’d fashioned, and watched all three cats leap after them, their tails stretched behind them in the stabilizing position of a free-fall-acclimated animal. Sinbad lagged behind, not yet as adept in microgravity. Another clue to the identity of the Ariadne's crew: they’d evidently spent a lot of time in microgravity, which meant outside of human space where habitats were common.

  The two new cats seemed healthy and happy, and Tau was glad he’d decided to let them out of isolation. Sinbad had been more forbearing than he’d dared to hope, for a cat who’d had the entire ship as his own territory for so long. Or perhaps he knew he’d be no match for the two newcomers under these strange conditions they seemed to know so well.

  Of course the two had not ventured out into the ship yet; they seemed

  content, for now, to stay in the lab.

  Tau straightened up, his gaze on the three cats. If only it was that easy with humans, he thought. Of course, with some people it probably was that easy. But he’d served as medic for a shipful of reticent individualists for years now, and he wasn’t sure if he should break habit—no, tradition —and get the two on his mind to talk, or to just keep his own mouth shut.

  It didn’t help when one of the persons under consideration was the captain and the other was the colleague with whom he worked the closest.

  "Laboring hard, I see."

  Tau looked up, saw Rael Cofort in the hatchway. She was smiling, looking immaculate as always from her coronet of auburn hair to the neat brown uniform. Tau’s gaze traveled back up to her face, noted the tired eyes above the smile, and he wondered when he should break that silence.

  Perhaps he could better gauge his approach through the relative safety of work. "There’s something Captain Jellico wanted me to discuss with you," he said, and watched the subtle flicker in her eyes when he mentioned the captain’s name. The captain reacted the same way when Rael was mentioned.

  "Have you ever been to Sargol?" he asked.

  Cofort looked up from petting the loudly purring Omega. "Never heard of it," she said, smiling. "Except that mention in your records about the plague, and the incident with the drink."

  "Good," Tau said. "Then you noted that those who took the drink were the ones who escaped succumbing to the plague."

  Cofort nodded, stretching out a hand to Alpha. "And I read your lab reports on the new antibodies in their blood."

  "Well, the change in their biochemistry may have gone deeper than we think," Tau said.

  Cofort dropped her hands. Now he had all her attention.

  "The captain has, as yet, asked me not to discuss it in front of Weeks

  and the three apprentices, for a number of reasons—mostly to protect them. But it seems they are showing subtle signs of having been affected by the esperite we were exposed to before we landed on Trewsworld."

  "Esperite," she repeated in a whisper.

  "The exposure was minimalized, and so far none of us older ones have shown any effects, either ill or otherwise. But the young four, the ones who took that drink on Sargol, seem to react to one another’s moods without being aware of it. Sometimes they appear to know where the others are, again without thinking about it. Could be coincidence; for the first item, they’re all good friends, which would explain shared moods, and as for the second, it might just be logical deductions, for they’ve all helped each other in duties often enough and can easily extrapolate where the others might be. But. it seems to happen rather often."

  She nodded, her manner
now professional. "But we don’t discuss it before the others."

  "Before any of the others, actually: as yet only the captain and I have talked it over. Now you know."

  She did not make any direct reference to the captain. "What would you have me do?"

  "Observe only, for now. If any—incident—occurs you think worthy of notice, get it into the lab reports. I’ll show you the password to that particular subdirectory."

  She sighed, then straightened up. "Does the captain know you’re telling me?"

  "No," Tau said. "He’s got enough on his mind. But you’re a medic, which means you need to be fully briefed."

  Her lips tightened, her gaze going abstract, and suddenly Tau took his risk. "As your physician aboard the Solar Queen," he said, "I am concerned about you."

  Rael Cofort’s smile deepened at the corners, and one of her brows lifted with an ironic quirk. "Is there anyone else you are concerned with?"

  Craig Tau faced her. "The captain has never been gabby, but I don’t remember when I’ve seen him this taciturn. Both of you have walked around this little ship doing your duties, unfailingly polite, and if you’ve addressed two words to one another since the day you were chased, I haven’t heard either of them. Did you two have an argument?"

  "No," Cofort said, pulling herself down into a chair. "We kissed."

  Tau whistled.

  She laughed softly. "It was a mistake, of course, but I have to admit it was the nicest mistake I’ve ever made."

  Tau expelled his breath in a sigh. "Care to explain?"

  She gave a tiny shrug—not enough to bounce her up from her seat—then said, "Perhaps I’d better, if you think it will help. I know Miceal won’t talk; it’s just not in his nature. I suspect the two of us ought to have talked it out by now— we might even have, had we had the time. But we came back to find the Tooe problem waiting, and then when all that got settled, Kosti’s fight, then Ali’s..." She shrugged again. "The fact is, we’re both in love. No, nothing’s been said, but I know how I feel, and I can feel how he feels. But neither of us is made for the kind of lighthearted fling that Ali, for instance, finds so easy. Love, and leave, and no regrets—no good-byes."