Star's End

by Glen Cook

  The woman stepped back, her eyes widening.

  “Must be Storm,” the man said. “My wife, Mister Storm.”

  “Well… You win some, lose some. You don’t know till you try.”

  “I suppose not. All right. Let’s check the roll, then get started. Looks like we’re good. We’ve got the right number of heads. All right. What we’re going to do is leave the ship through the personnel lock and line over to one of the work bays on one of the mooring stays. There’s zero gravity in the work area so you don’t have to worry about falling. Follow me.”

  He went to a hatchway, opened it, stepped through. The future Seiner citizens followed.

  Mouse tried hanging back, to get nearer to the woman.

  BenRabi gouged his ribs. “Come on. Let her alone.”

  “Moyshe, she’s driving me crazy.”

  “She’s prime. Yes. And married, and we don’t need any more enemies.”

  “Hey. It isn’t sex. I mean, she’s fine. Like you say, prime stuff. What I’m saying, though, is this is our shot at somebody from outside.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “She’s not from Danion.”

  “How the hell do you know that?” BenRabi ducked through the third of the lock doors. “You’ve maybe been around the world here, but I don’t think you’ve gotten to them all. Not yet. We haven’t run into a hundredth of Danion’s people.”

  “But the ones we have all came from the same mold. Oh, Christ!”

  BenRabi slithered out of the ship. He stood on her skin, offering Mouse a hand. In both directions, as far as he could see, were tubes, cubes, spars, bars… Hectare on hectare of abused metal. Overhead, the laser-polished stone of the asteroid arched in an almost indiscernible bow. Danion’s outermost extremities cleared it by a scant hundred meters.

  Those hundred meters had Mouse petrified.

  Mouse was scared to death of falling. The phobia usually manifested itself during a liftoff or landing, when up and down had a more definite meaning.

  “You all right?”

  Storm was shaking. Sweat beaded his face. He shoved a hand out the hatch, twice, like a drowning man clawing for a lifeline.

  The others were hand-over-handing it along a cable spanning the gap between ship and asteroid.

  “Come on, Mouse. It won’t be that bad.” How the hell had he gotten through all the e.v.a. exercises and small boat drills they had had to endure in Academy?

  Mouse’s phobia perpetually astonished benRabi. Nothing else fazed the man. Whining bullets and crackling lasers simply created the background noises of his work…

  His work!

  “Assassin’s mind, Mouse. Go into assassin’s mind.” The state approximated a meditational trance, except that while he was in it Mouse was one of the most deadly men who ever lived.

  Was he too much out of practice?

  Mouse’s shaking slowly subsided. His eyes became glassy.

  “All right,” benRabi said. “Come on. Slow. Take the handholds and work your way over to the line. That’s good. Good. Now across to the balcony.”

  Moyshe spoke softly, without inflection. In this state Mouse had to be handled gently. Anything could set him off. Anyone not programmed in as Friendly could get broken up pretty bad.

  The woman instructor overtook benRabi on the line. “What’s wrong with your friend?”

  “He’s an acrophobe.”

  “A Navy man?”

  “I know. Be real careful for a few minutes. Keep the group away. He’s not very stable right now.”

  He got Mouse onto the balcony, with his back to the vast mass of the ship, and talked him down. In five minutes Storm was asking, “You ever meet anyone on Danion who wasn’t blond with blue eyes?”

  “Some. Not many.”

  “Anybody with black blood?”

  “No.”

  “I rest my case.” Mouse surveyed the harvestship. “Damn, she took a beating.”

  “Huh?”

  “Different perspective, Moyshe. It’s not up and down from here.”

  BenRabi scanned the battered ship. “Mouse, I think we’ve been set up.”

  “What?”

  “I thought it was a little weird, coming out the way we did. I was going to ask the lady why they didn’t have something better.” He pointed with his chin.

  A half kilometer away a telescoping tubeway connected the ship with the rock face. BenRabi soon indicated a half dozen more connections. Each was large enough to use to drive heavy equipment onto and off the harvestship.

  “Think they’re just working on you and me? Or the whole group?”

  “Fly easy,” benRabi suggested.

  “It’s my ass in a sling, Moyshe. I’ll be your basic model of decorum.”

  “Are these two part of a plan?”

  “Take it for granted. The question is, was it supposed to be obvious? Or are they just clumsy?”

  “To quote a certain Admiral, who used to tell us what to do, ‘Just lay back in the weeds and let them show their hand.’ He was good at mixing metaphors.”

  “How’s the writing going, Moyshe?”

  They turned to follow the Seiner couple, who were shooing the others into a tunnel.

  “I haven’t written a page in months. I don’t know why.”

  “Time?”

  “That’s part of it. But I always found time before.”

  Atop all his other hobbies, benRabi dabbled at writing short fiction. Traveling to Carson’s from Luna Command, an eon ago, he had looked forward to the Starfisher mission as a vacation operation during which he could get a lot of work done. He had expected to stay a maximum of six weeks. The Admiral had promised… A year had passed, and he had completed one dreary story, the manuscript of which he had not seen in months.

  Once they departed the central hollow of the asteroid they entered local artificial gravity. There was little visible difference between ship and shore.

  “Oh, boy!” Mouse said. “More brand new same old thing. This is going to get boring in a few years, Moyshe.”

  “Sorry you decided to stay?”

  Mouse eyed him momentarily. “No.” His expression became a little strange, but benRabi paid it no attention.

  “Look, Mouse. Kids. I haven’t seen any kids since we left Luna Command.”

  “Hooray.”

  “Come on, man. Look at that. Must be some kind of class tour.”

  Twenty little girls around eight years old were giggling along behind an old man. The old man was explaining something in a crackling voice. Several of the girls were aping him behind his back. Some of the others were making faces at the mockers.

  “Call me back in ten years,” Mouse said. “I got no use for them till they get ripe.”

  “You have got to be the sourest…”

  “It some kind of crime not to like kids? Speaking of which, I never saw you get along with any but Jupp’s boy and that Greta. And she was sixteen going on twenty-six.”

  Jupp von Drachau had been their classmate in Academy. He was now High Command’s special errand boy. He had helped with their operation on The Broken Wings. Later, it had been his assignment to provide the firepower when it had come time to seize Payne’s Fleet. They had thought. His premature approach and detection had left them stranded for the full year they had contracted to work for the Seiners.

  “Horst-Johann. I didn’t see him last time we were in Luna Command. That’s two years ago now. Damn, time flies. Bet he’s grown half a meter.”

  Their male guide said, “People, we’ll lunch in one of the worker’s commons before we show you a typical creche. Don’t be shy. Visit. People here are as curious about you as you are about them. We’d appreciate it if you’d stay close, though. If one of you gets lost, we’ll both have trouble explaining.”

  “Great,” Mouse said. “Still more brand new same old thing. Doesn’t anybody ever eat anywhere but in these goddamned caf
eterias? I’d sell my soul for a go at a decent kitchen on my own.”

  “You cook?”

  “I’m a man of myriad talents, Moyshe. Think that’s what I’ll do when we hit The Broken Wings. Figure out how to make myself a home-cooked meal. And devour it in private. Not out in the middle of a goddamned football field with five thousand other people.”

  “You’ve got one classic case of the crankies this morning, my friend.”

  “I didn’t get any last night. Besides, I’m not patient with crap, and this whole field trip is main course horseshit without the hollandaise.”

  The commons was as predictable as Mouse feared. So was the food. The conversation did not sparkle either, till Mouse took the offensive. “Grace, what’s the point of this exercise?”

  “I don’t understand your question, Mister Storm.”

  Moyshe grinned behind his hand. The woman was sensitive to that overpowering Mouse charm. She had become as decorous as a schoolteacher by way of compensation.

  “This bullshit exercise. You dragged us away from work we don’t have time to get done right anyway. You run us out on a goddamned wire, then walk us all to hell and gone when we could have done the whole thing on a bus. You tell us we’re going to see how Seiners live when they’re not in the fleet, but you just show us the same old stuff. And since you’ve only kidnapped us for today, you’re not really serious about showing us anything. I mean, an idiot would realize that it would take weeks just to skim the surface of a civilization like yours.”

  The woman’s dusky face darkened with embarrassment.

  “I mean, here we sit, eight former landsmen, all with that much figured out, and all of us on our best behavior figuring it’s some kind of test or someone wants us off Danion for a while… Whichever, it’s dumb. You’re wasting our time and yours.”

  “Mister Storm…”

  “Don’t mind him,” Moyshe interjected. “It’s old age creeping up on him. He’s not as tolerant of games-playing as he used to be.”

  Mouse grinned and winked. BenRabi grinned back.

  Their guides surveyed the other landsmen. They said nothing, but aggravated agreement marked each of their faces.

  “There’s no point in going ahead, then,” the male guide said. “Your response is data enough. Finish your meals. I’ll be right back.” He disappeared.

  “What is the point?” benRabi asked.

  Grace shrugged. “I just work here.”

  “Psychologist?”

  She was startled. “How did you know?”

  “I can smell them. You really married to him?”

  “No.” She laughed weakly. “He’s my brother.”

  “Ooh.” Mouse said it softly. Only Moyshe heard.

  “You swallow something radioactive, Mouse?”

  “What?”

  “You just started glowing.”

  The lady psychologist was not immune. Mouse wangled a date before her brother returned. BenRabi did not doubt that Mouse would make the date an interesting experience.

  He could not fathom Mouse’s method. Even knowing they were being manipulated, knowing Mouse’s reputation, women walked right in. Indeed, Mouse’s reputation seemed to make him more interesting.

  Their guide returned. He deposited his half-finished tray on the conveyor to the sculleries. He waited impatiently while his flock followed suit. He scowled at Mouse, who had opened up with the big guns and had Grace laughing like a teenager at stories woollier than the mammoths they antedated.

  “Style,” benRabi told himself. “That’s what he’s got.”

  “Excuse me?” one of the ladies asked.

  “Talking to myself, Ellen. It’s the only way to hold an intelligent conversation.”

  “You think they’ll be mad at us because of this?”

  “Maybe. More likely at each other. Like Mouse said, it was a dumb idea, no matter what the point was.”

  “Unless it’s a cover.”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  The man had a bus waiting outside the cafeteria. In ten minutes it reached the departure bay they had left so laboriously earlier. By then Mouse was holding Grace’s hand. He had her purring and almost unable to wait till he got off work.

  “Come on, Storm,” her brother snapped. “Back to your assigned department. The rest of you, go back to your jobs. Grace, for god’s sake…”

  “Oh, shut up, Burt.”

  “He’s got a name,” one of the ladies crowed. Mouse’s mutinous attitude was catching. The Seiners had tried to put something over on the landsmen and they were responding with a mocking camaraderie.

  “Come on, Mouse,” Moyshe grumbled. “Let’s don’t start anything.”

  “Right. At eight, Grace? Bye.” Storm bounced onto the scooter he had commandeered for the ride to the departure station. Moyshe took the seat behind him.

  “New worlds to conquer, eh?”

  “That’s one way of looking at it, Moyshe. This old one is starting to wear. They must have some kind of open contract on me. Some kind of bounty for the girl who cons me into the ‘I dos.’ They won’t take no for an answer. Not and stay friends. Weird people.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Kindervoort demanded when they strolled into the coliseum, where he was overseeing some especially poor marksmen.

  “Surprise,” Mouse crowed. “The game was called on account of rain.”

  “What’s he talking about, Moyshe?”

  “It was some kind of dumb exercise. I’m sure you know what it was all about.”

  “I told him it was stupid.”

  “Who?”

  “The Ship’s Commander. He’s up to something with you two. I don’t know what.”

  “Remind him that one of the reasons I crossed over was because people wouldn’t play games with me here. I’d have a job I knew what it was. I’d have a place in the scheme. Tell him that if the crap keeps up, I hike my ass back to Contact and chain me to a couch. He can put his auction project where the sun don’t shine. It’s a stupid operation too.”

  “Calm down, Moyshe. Just go back to your job.”

  When Kindervoort turned away, Mouse said, “Good to see you stand up on your hind legs, Moyshe.”

  “It takes me awhile to get fired up.”

  “Like the man said, let’s go to work. We’ve got a long way to go with these clowns.”

  The next morning, whispering with motionless lips as they hurried along a crowded passageway, Mouse said, “They used the time to fix us up with a new set of bugs, Moyshe. Very good stuff. Better than anything Kindervoort stocks. The kind that hook into a stress analyzer. They’re putting the big eye on us, Moyshe. From now on you’d better play safe, no matter where you are or who you’re with.”

  “What would they be looking for? We don’t have anything to hide.”

  “Who knows? But don’t forget that they’re looking.”

  Ten: 3049 AD

  The Main Sequence

  BenRabi was trying to clip a couple of stubborn, noxious-looking hairs out of his right ear. Amy called, “Ready yet, honey?”

  “Half a minute.” He had butterflies. He did not want to go. The stalls and arguments had run out, though. He had to meet Amy’s family. Such as it was.

  He was about to be exhibited to her mother. A prime trophy, he thought. Former landsman turned Seiner, on his way up. A prize for any single girl.

  He had been getting that feeling from Amy. The new was wearing off. The magic was fading. He was becoming an object of value instead of one of emotion.

  Was the problem his or hers? Was he reading her wrong? He always misinterpreted women.

  “Moyshe, will you come on?”

  He stepped out of the bathroom. “How do I look?”

  “Perfect. Come on. We’ll be late for the shuttle.”

  “I want to make a good impression.”

  “Stop worrying. Mom would be happy with a warthog, so lon
g as I was married.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  A flash of the old Amy returned. “Any time.”

  They rode a scooter out one of the connecting tubes, into the halls of the asteroid. Amy slowed to pass a series of doors with temporary plaques hung on them, reading names Moyshe found meaningless. “We’re here.”

  The plaque said stafinglas. Amy parked the scooter among a small herd nursing charger teats.

  “What’s that mean? Stafinglas?” Moyshe asked.

  “I don’t know. I think it’s made up.”

  “That’s where your mother lives?”

  Amy nodded. “We’ve got to hurry. They’ll start pumping the air out of the lock in a couple minutes. They won’t let us board after they start.”

  Could he stall that long? He decided that would be a petty trick. Much as intuition warned him that the trip was a waste, it was important to Amy. The thing to do was grit his teeth and ride it out.

  The shuttle was a small, boxy vessel useful for nothing but hauling passengers. The seats were full when Moyshe and Amy boarded. Dozens of people stood in the aisles. BenRabi recognized a few as Danion crewfolk.

  “Lot of relatives of Danion people in this Stafinglas, eh?”

  “Yes. The old harvestships are like family enterprises. Three or four generations have served in the same ship. It gets to be a tradition. Almost nobody ships outside their own fleet. They say that’s why we’re getting into this nationalistic competitiveness between fleets. There’s talk about having a computer assign new crews by lot.”

  Moyshe smiled. “Bet that’s a popular idea.”

  “Like the black plague.”

  His feet hurt and his back ached before the shuttle reached its destination. It was a six-hour passage. He spent every minute standing.

  Stafinglas was exactly what Moyshe expected. An asteroid with kilometer upon kilometer of broad tunnels which served as residential streets. “I’m home,” he told Amy. “It’s just like Luna Command.”

  She gave him a funny look. “Really?”

  “On a smaller scale.” He wanted to tell her it was not a natural or comfortable way to live. Instead, he asked, “You ever been down on a planet?”

  “No. Why?”