Chane said, "However they do it, they're doing it. And if they've got the power on, all those cases will open up."
All those cases of jewels and precious metals. The loot of a galaxy, the way he saw it. It made his mouth water. Even the Starwolves had never aspired to such splendid heights.
A golden egg attached itself to the lock chamber at the end of the tunnel.
Chane pressed close to the viewport, with Dilulio and Bollard beside him. Nobody said anything. They waited, feeling that something decisive was about to happen.
The tunnel-like structure of crystal rods began to glow with a shimmering radiance that made its outline blur and shift. The radiance intensified, flared, then settled to a steady pulsing.
Things began to appear in it, gliding smoothly and swiftly from the great ship to the golden egg.
"Some kind of a carrier field," said Dilullo. "It makes the stuff weightless and kicks it along. ..."
Chane groaned. "Don't give me any scientific lectures. Just look at that. Look at it!"
The loot of a galaxy went by, just out of reach, streaming steadily from the hold of the Krii ship into the golden egg; into a series of golden eggs that operated in an endless belt-shuttle, loading and rising and returning in a circular pattern. The loot of a galaxy. "And they're not even going to spend it," Chane said.
"They're going to all of this trouble just to study it." "Blasphemy, according to your ideas," said Dilullo, and grinned at Chane. "Don't cry." "What are you talking about?" asked Bollard. "Nothing. Except our friend here seems to have a frustrated case of sticky fingers." Bollard shook his head. "The devil with our friend. Look; they're loading all the specimens the expedition gathered. When they're finished, what then?"
It was not a question that was intended to be answered, and nobody tried. But eventually the answer came. The last items went down the carrier field and the glow died.
Methodically the Krii dismantled their equipment and returned it into the clouds. The great hulk became dark again and now it was empty, drained of all use and meaning.
Finally, and at last, one of the Krii walked toward the Merc ship. It stood for a moment, very tall, swaying slightly with the wind, its great passionless eyes fixed on them.
Then it flung up one long thin arm in an unmistakable gesture, pointing to the sky.
It turned then and went back to the single golden egg that remained. The hatch closed, and in a moment the trampled sand was empty.
All of a sudden the lights were on in the Merc ship and the generators were jarring the bulkhead as they jolted into life again.
"He told us to go, and I think I know why," said Dilullo. He began to bellow urgently into the intercom. "Secure hatches! Flight stations on the double! We're taking off!"
And they took off, going like a scalded rocket in a flat trajectory that took them away from the cliff wall at an angle too low for the Vhollan laser beams to bear on them until they were out of range.
Dilullo ordered the ship into a stationary orbit and told Rutledge, "Get that camera working. I've a pretty good idea what's going to happen and I want to record it."
Rutledge opened the pod that held the camera and turned the monitor screen to ON.
Chane stared with the others into the screen that showed them what the camera was seeing.
"Too much dust," said Rutledge, and manipulated the controls, and the picture cleared as the camera saw with different eyes, exchanging a light-reflectant image for one composed by sensor-beams.
It showed the great wrecked ship, lying monstrous on the plain. It showed the ridge and the two Vhollan cruisers beyond; the cruisers seemed like tiny, little miniatures for children to hang on strings and whirl around their heads.
After a while Rutledge looked at Dilullo, and Dilullo said, "Keep filming. Unless you want to go home broke."
"You think the Krii are going to destroy the ship?" asked Chane.
"Wouldn't you? When you know people have been meddling and prying with it, people with much less technological skill than yours but with much more warlike natures ... would you leave it there for them to study? The Krii couldn't remove everything. The drive system, the generators, all that would be left, and the defensive mechanisms. Given time, the Vhollans might learn how to duplicate them in terms of our atomic table. Besides, why else would the Krii have told us to get clear? They wouldn't care about our fight with the Vhollans, and whether we got away or not. I think they didn't want us to get killed by any action of theirs."
The image remained static on the screen, the vast dark broken outline of the ship quite clear against the sand.
Suddenly a little spark flashed down and touched the hulk. It spread with incredible swiftness into a blinding flame that covered all that huge fabric of metal from stem to stern and ate it up, devoured it, crumbled it to ashes and then to atoms, until there was nothing left but a mile-long scar on the sand. And presently even that would vanish.
The Vhollan cruisers, shielded by the ridge, were unharmed.
Dilullo said, "Shut off the camera. I guess that shows we did our dutv."
"We?" said Rutledge.
"The Kharalis hired us to find out what was in the nebula that threatened them, and destroy it. We found it, and it has been destroyed. Period." He looked down at the Vhollan cruisers. "They'll be getting busy on repairs now. I don't see any more reason to hang around."
There wasn't a man aboard who wanted to quarrel with him.
They climbed up out of the atmosphere, and out from under the shadow that had oppressed them for so many days, where the giant ship had hung between them and the sun.
Whether by accident or design, Dilullo chose a course that took them, not close but close enough to see ...
Close enough to see a vast dark shape breaking out of orbit, beginning the long voyage home across the black and empty ocean that laps the shores of the island universes.
"No visceral emotions," said Dilullo softly, "but, by God, they've got something."
Even Chane had to agree.
The Mercs had expansive ideas about doing some celebrating and Dilullo just let them go ahead and try. As he had foreseen, they were too tired, and those off duty were glad enough to crawl into their bunks for the first decent sleep they had had in so long they couldn't remember.
Chane, not all that exhausted, remained in the wardroom for another drink with Dilullo. They were all alone now, and Dilullo said, "When we get to Kharal, you'll stay in the ship and make as though you never existed."
Chane grinned. "You don't have to talk me into that. Tell me, do you think they'll pay over the lightstones?"
Dilullo nodded. "They'll pay. In the first place, nasty as they are in some ways, they keep their word. In the second place, the films of that monster ship will so impress them that the sight of it being destroyed will make them glad to pay."
"You don't plan to tell them that it wasn't really us who destroyed it?" Chane asked.
"Look," said Dilullo; "I'm reasonably fair and honest but I'm not foolish. They hired us to do a job, and the job is done, and we're pretty well battered up from it. That's enough." He added, "What will you do with your share when we sell the lightstones?"
Chane shrugged. "I hadn't thought about it. I'm used to taking things, not buying them."
"That's a little habit you'll have to get over if you want to stay a Merc. Do you?"
Chane paused before answering. "I do, for the time being, anyway. As you said before, I haven't got any place else to go. ... I don't think you're as good as the Varnans, but you're pretty good." Dilullo said dryly, "I don't think you'H ever make the best
Merc that ever was, but you've got capabilities." "Where do we go from Kharal?" Chane asked. "Earth?" Dilullo nodded. "You know," said Chane, "I've got kind of interested in Earth."
Dilullo shook his head and said dourly, "I'm not too happy about taking you there. When I think of the people there walking up and down, and looking at you and not knowing you're a tiger impersonating
an Earth-man, I wonder what I'm getting into. But I guess we can clip your claws."
Chane smiled. "We'll see."
Book II:
The Closed Worlds
I
He walked the streets of New York, and tried to behave as though he were an Earthman.
If they find out what I really am, I'm dead, thought Morgan Chane.
He looked like an Earthman. Not too tall, with wide shoulders and black hair and a face of dark, hard planes. And he could speak the language well enough. These things were not strange, since his dead parents had been natives of this world. This Earth, which he had never seen until a few days ago.
Don't even think of the fact that you're a Starwolf!
Nobody knew that, except Dilullo. And Dilullo was not going to tell anyone, at least as long as they stayed partners. Which in effect gave Dilullo the power of life and death over him, for death was the swift and certain sentence meted out to a captured Starwolf on nearly every world in the galaxy.
Chane smiled, and thought, The hell with it. Danger was living, and if you avoided danger, you were only existing. Anyway, there was small risk of being suspected for what he was, here on a world where he looked just like everyone else. Nobody would even notice him in the crowd.
But they did. People looked at Chane, and looked back at him again. There was a springiness in his step that he could not quite hide. He had been born and reared on Varna, the world of the hated Starwolves, and that was a big and heavy planet. He could adjust his muscles to the lesser gravitation of smaller planets like this Earth, but he could not completely hide the latent strength and speed of his body. And there was something in his dark face, a touch of just faintly inhuman ruthlessness, that made him stand out.
The men looked at him with something of the expression with which they looked at the not-men one occasionally met in this starport quarter. The women looked at him as though they were both scared and attracted. These side-glances began to make Chane a little uncomfortable. He was not afraid of any of these people—a Varnan could break one of them in half— but he didn't want to start anything.
"You've got a genius for finding trouble," Dilullo had told him. "If you get into any here, you're all through as a Merc."
Chane had only shrugged. But the truth was that he didn't want to stop being a Merc. The Mercs ... the name was short for mercenaries ... were the second toughest people in space, the hardbitten men, most of them Earthmen, who went out and did all the dirty, dangerous jobs in the galaxy for pay. They were not as tough as the Starwolves, but the Starwolves had thrown him out, and being a Merc was better than anything else open to him.
Chane left the crowded street and went into a tavern. It was pretty crowded too, but most of the customers were men off the starport and their girls, and most of them were too exhilarated to pay attention to Chane. He ordered whisky and drank it, and thought that no matter what Dilullo said it was poor stuff, and then he ordered some more. The din was loud around him but he dropped away from it as he brooded.
He remembered Varna, the place that had always been home to him. The great, harsh, unfriendly, oversized planet which gave its children nothing except the unmatchable strength and speed which its cruelly heavy gravitation bred into their bodies. Even to Chane it had given that, when he had survived being born there. It was as though Varna was a stern mother who told her sons, "I have given you strength and that is all I have to give ... go forth and take whatever else you want."
And they had gone forth, the sons of Varna! As soon as they learned the way to make starships, from foolish Earthmen who were trying to encourage trade, the Varnans swarmed out to loot the lesser worlds. They were unbeatable in space; no other people could stand the acceleration pressures they could stand. Across the galaxy went the fear of the quick and ruthless ones— the Starwolves!
A smile crossed Chane's brooding face like a ripple upon a dark pool. He could see in memory of the times when their little squadrons would come home, dropping down out of the starry sky toward their grim mother world, the lights, the loot spread out and the laughter, nobody caring much that some had died in the foray: the Varnans striding like conquerors into their cities, their tall bodies splendid in their fine golden-down hair, their high-boned faces proud and their cat-slanted eyes bright.
And he had been one of them. He walked proud with them; he raided the starworlds with them; he lived in the tingle of danger.
It was all gone now; they had driven him out. He would never see Varna again, and here he was, sitting in a stinking room in a dull city on a dull planet.
"Having fun, Chane?"
A hand fell on his shoulder and he looked up into the long, horselike face of Dilullo.
"I'm having fun," said Chane. "I can hardly remember a time when I've had more fun than now."
"That's fine," said the older man, and sat down. "That's just fine. I was afraid you might be pining for some of the fighting and killing and robbing that Varnans call fun. I was so worried about it that I thought I'd keep an eye on you."
Dilullo's bleak, no-colored eyes had an ironic twinkle in them. He turned and ordered a drink.
Chane looked at him, thinking that there were times when he hated Dilullo and that this was one of the times.
Dilullo turned back and then he said, "You know, Chane, you look like a bored tiger sitting there. But the tiger is going to stay bored, and on a short leash. This isn't one of the outworlds, it's Earth; and we're kind of strict here."
"It does seem a bit dull, now that you mention it," said Chane.
Dilullo's drink came and he drank half of it. Then he said, "I thought you might feel that way. So you may be glad to hear that we might just have another job coming up."
Chane looked up quickly. "What job? Where?"
"Don't know yet," said Dilullo. He finished his drink. "But a very big shot in interstellar trade named Ashton wants to see me in the morning. I assume he doesn't want to see a Merc leader without some reason."
"Do you want to take on something so soon?" said Chane. "I mean, we did pretty well on that job for Kharal. I'd suppose you'd want to take a rest."
Dilullo's hard mouth tightened. He looked down at his empty glass, his stubby, strong fingers twirling it around.
"I get my hair cut real short, Chane," he said. "But I can't get it cut short enough to keep the gray from showing around the edges. I'm getting a little old to lead Mercs. If I turned down a good offer, I might just not get another."
Just then a man came hurrying into the place. He was a tall, hardbitten man who wore the same kind of belted Merc coverall that they wore. He looked around and then hastened over to them.
"You're John Dilullo, aren't you?" he said. "I've seen you down at Merc Hall, though I never met you." He babbled, in his excitement. "We just found Bollard. Someone said you were in here, and I came—"
Dilullo had got to his feet and his face was suddenly twice as craggy and harsh. Bollard had been his second in the job they had last worked, and he was an old friend.
"You found him? What does that mean?"
"In an alley only a block or two from here," said the other. "Looks like he was stunned and robbed. We put in a call for the police and then someone said they'd seen you—"
Dilullo interrupted again, taking the babbling man by the arm and propelling him toward the door.
"Show me," he said.
He and Chane rapidly followed the man down the street. Darkness had fallen a little while ago, and the lights were on; the sidewalk was not yet too crowded.
The man kept babbling. "Don't think he's bad hurt, only stunned. I knew him right away, he was leader on a job I went on a year ago."
Dilullo muttered an.oath. "I thought he was too old to be this sort of fool."
Their leader ducked into a narrow alley between looming warehouses. "This way ... around the next corner. I don't know if the police are here yet. We called them first thing ..."
They were halfway to the corner when from t
he darkness behind them came the whisper of a stunner, notched way down.
Dilullo dropped unconscious. Chane completed only a quarter of a turn before it dropped him too.
Chane was not unconscious. The stunner, to avoid being too noisy, had been notched down to just the exact power sufficient to knock a man out.
An ordinary man, that is. But Chane was not an ordinary Earthman; Varna had bred tougher muscles and a tougher nervous system, and he did not go all the way out.
He fell and hit the pavement and lay there, face up, his eyes open, his limbs almost paralyzed. Almost. He could still move his muscles a bit, though they felt vague and remote.
He made no movement. The Starwolf cunning that a lifetime had fostered told him not to move yet, not until he had conquered at least some of the numbness.
As through a mist, he saw the man who had guided them here looking down at them, and then another man came running from whatever dark doorway he had hidden in for his ambush. Both men were wavering, unreal figures to Chane's eyes.
"This one," said the pseudo-Merc. He bent over Dilul-lo's unconscious figure and began to search him.
"I still don't think he'd have them on him," said the other man.
"Look," said the other, searching frantically. "He got six Kharali light-stones for his share of the last job and he hasn't been to any place to deposit them. I told you, I've been watching him ... ah!"
He had drawn out from Dilullo's inner clothing a little pouch, and he shook its contents into his hand. Even in the darkness, the light-stones shone with that inner radiance that made the gem desired by all the galaxy.
Six jewels, Chane thought dully, and all Dilullo had gone through to get them, all that hell and danger in Corvus Cluster. The wise Dilullo, who kept his share in stones instead of selling them as Chane and the others had done.
Chane still made no movement. He could feel more life coming back into his nerves and muscles, but not enough yet. The other man bent over him and took his money from his pocket, but he still did not move. He wasn't ready ...
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