Starwolf (Omnibus)

by Edmond Hamilton

  He walked around and found that the looming castle was really only a hollow shell, a great open space inside it. He climbed the towers and the battlements of the walls, and wondered what it would have been like to fight in the way that they did, back in the far past, with swords and spears and primitive weapons. He supposed that some of his own ancestors had been fighters like that.

  He mused, liking the lowering sky and the harsh old stones and the silence, until William Williams came to him, wearing now a worn wool jacket instead of the uniform coat.

  "We close now," said the old man. "I'll walk up through town with you and show you a few of our sights ... it's on my way."

  As they walked, with the sky dusking into twilight, it seemed that the old chap was more interested in asking questions than in answering them.

  "And you came from America? Of course, that was where David went, long ago. Is it a good job you have there?"

  "I'm not there very much," Chane said. "I've worked in starships for a long time."

  He thought how Dilullo would react to that discreet description of a Starwolf s profession, and smiled a little.

  "Ah, it's a wonderful thing that men can go to the stars but it's not for me, not for me," said William Williams. He stopped, and steered Chane toward the door of a low stone building. "We'll have a pint together, if you'll so honor me."

  The room inside was low and poorly lit, and there was no one but a barman and three young men farther along the bar.

  Williams paid for the pint with the utmost dignity, insisting, "It is my pleasure, to buy an ale for one of the Chanes."

  Chane thought the stuff was mild as water but he did not want to say so. He suggested having another, and the old man dug an elbow into his ribs in a roguish sort of way, saying, "Well, since you've twisted my arm, I must break my usual rule."

  When that was finished he took Chane along the bar to the three young men and told them, "This is the son of David Chane of Caernarfon, and you've all heard of that family. And these are Hayden Jones and Griff Lewis and Lewis Evans."

  They mumbled acknowledgment to Chane. Two of them were small and nondescript young men but Hay-den Jones was a very big, dark young man with very bright, black eyes.

  "And now I must say good night and be getting along," the old man told Chane. "I leave you in good company and hope you come home again."

  Chane said goodbye, then turned to the three young men and suggested that he buy them a drink.

  There was a furtive hostility about them, and they did not answer him. He repeated the offer.

  "We do not need damned Americans coming here to buy our ale for us," said Hayden Jones without looking at him.

  "Ah," said Chane. "That may be true. But you need better manners, don't you?"

  The big young man whirled and his hand cracked and Chane found himself, amazed, sitting on the floor of the room. The old Starwolf anger flared up in him bright as fire, and he gathered himself.

  Then he saw Hayden Jones turn to his two companions, not saying anything but on his face the pleased smile of a child who had just made everyone notice him. There was something so naive in that smile that the bright anger faded away as fast as it had come.

  Chane relaxed his muscles and got to his feet. He rubbed his chin and said, "You have a hard hand on you, Hayden Jones."

  He stuck out his hand and grasped Jones' shoulder in a bruising grip, putting his Varna strength into it. "I have a hard hand too. If it's a fight you must have I'll oblige you. But what I would really like to do is buy a few drinks."

  Hayden Jones looked startled, and then he grinned sheepishly and looked at his two companions. "Well, now," he said. "We can always fight later, can't we, after we've had those drinks?"

  They had the drinks, and then they had some more, and when the barman finally shoved them out the door it was late night and the gale had broken. The wind threw rain at them like smallshot as they went down the slanting streets, singing the songs that Chane's three companions had been trying to teach him.

  An upstairs window opened and an elderly female's voice screeched at them. Hayden Jones turned and shouted, with great stateliness.

  "Be quiet, is it? And when, Mrs. Griffith, have you been so unpatriotic that you cannot hear the national anthem of Wales?"

  The window slammed down and they went on. Outside the hotel, Hayden Jones said, "Now, about the fight ..."

  "Let us save it until next time," said Chane. "Late at night, I have no stomach for it."

  "Until next time!"

  They grinned at each other and shook hands. Chane went inside and up to his room. When he got there the little communic he had placed on the old-fashioned wooden bureau was buzzing. He switched it on, and John Dilullo's voice came through.

  "Chane? You can come back now. I've got a crew."

  Chane acknowledged, feeling a strong sense of regret. Ancestral memories or not, he had taken a liking to this place and these people. He would have wished to stay longer. But he was obedient, and booked his passage on the first New York rocket, All the way across the Atlantic he was thinking, I will come back to that place some day and have that fight. I think it would be a good one.

  Back in New York, Chane went into the building on a side street in the starport quarter that was formally the Headquarters of the Guild of Mercenaries, but which was always called Merc Hall.

  In the big main room he looked up at the wall where the crews were posted. There were neat directories of white letters on black backgrounds. He read the first one.

  Leader: Martin Bender

  Second: J. Bioc

  Ship-captain: Paul Vristow

  There followed under that a dozen other names, some of which were not Earthman names at all. Then, below that;

  Destination: Procyon Three.

  He went along the wall, reading the other directories, and he thought, Achernar, Vanoon, Spica, Morr, the Mercs really got around. Until he saw

  Leader: John Dilullo

  Second: I. Bollard

  And on with the other names. "Morgan Chane" was at the bottom of the list.

  Dilullo's voice rasped in his ear. "Well, did you expect to be first? Remember, you're a pretty new Merc. You have no seniority."

  "I'm surprised," said Chane, "that Bollard would go out again this soon."

  Dilullo smiled bleakly. "Bollard's one of the few Mercs who's a family man. He's got a raft of children he adores. He's also got an ugly, nagging wife. He stays home just long enough to turn over his takings and then gets out to space again."

  Dilullo added, "We're made up. I'm going to call Mr. Ashton; if he's free, I'll go over and sign the contract. Wait here."

  Chane waited, and presently Dilullo came back with a surprised look on his face.

  "You know what? Ashton's coming over here. He said he wants to meet the whole crew."

  Dilullo, impressed, hurried out to get the crew together in one of the smaller rooms of the Hall. Bollard came in and saw Chane, and his fat, round face creased in an affectionate smile.

  "Ah, the rock-hopper," he said. "I saw your name on the list, Chane. I haven't decided yet whether I'm happy about it."

  "Be happy," said Chane.

  Bollard shook his head, laughing as though he'd heard the best joke in the world. "No, I'm not sure. You nearly jammed us into big trouble the last time, though I have to admit you did noble helping to get us out of it."

  "Mr. James Ashton," said Dilullo's voice, speaking gruffly as though he refused to be impressed by a very important person.

  Ashton smiled and nodded and went through the introductions. The Mercs were all as polite as Sunday-school scholars. They eyed the man of money with unliking eyes.

  Then Ashton surprised them. He began to talk to them, looking a little bit upset and embarrassed, but very earnest and determined, like a fussy schoolteacher trying to explain something.

  "I've been worrying about you men," he said. "I offered a big lot of money for men to go to the Closed Worlds and loo
k for my brother, and I know the money is why you're going. But I feel worried ..."

  He broke off, and then resolutely started again. "I've been thinking: I may be endangering a lot of men's lives, to save the one life of my brother. So I thought I should tell you ... this job will be dangerous, as I'm sure Mr. Dilullo has explained. But if it's too dangerous, I want no man's death on my conscience. If the risks are too great, draw back. If you come back and tell me that it was not within reason to go on, I'll still pay two thirds of what I offered."

  The Mercs said nothing but there was a sudden thaw in their attitude. Finally Dilullo said, "Thanks, Mr.

  Ashton. Mercs don't quit very easily. But thanks, just the same."

  When Ashton and the other Mercs had gone, Dilullo told Chane, "You know, Ashton's a good sort. The fact that he made an offer like that, that he's worried about us, will make us knock ourselves out for him at Allubane."

  Chane said, with an ironical smile, "Sure it will. And maybe that's just why he said that."

  Dilullo looked at him disgustedly. "I wouldn't have a Starwolf s mind for anything you can name. No wonder that you don't really have a friend in the universe."

  "But I have," said Chane. "I made some, in the place called Wales. Fine fellows, full of fight and fun, and they taught me some great songs. Listen to this one—it's an old war-song about the Men of Harlech."

  He threw back his head and sang, and Dilullo winced.

  "There's never been anybody Welsh who didn't fancy he could sing," he said. "Not even a Starwolf."

  "It's a grand tune," said Chane. "It's worthy of being a Varnan battle-song."

  "Then get ready to sing it in the Closed Worlds," Dilullo said. "I've got a feeling that my greed for money and a fine house is taking us to big trouble there."

  IV

  The little Merc ship, a Class Twenty, plodded out through the system of Sol and then jumped into overdrive and went on its way.

  The vast, sweeping spirals of the galaxy, the irregularly curved arms of denser star-concentrations, dwarfed the ship to a mere infinitesimal mote. Far behind it, Cygnus Arm was a gigantic rampart of gleaming suns. It stretched in a rimward direction to a galactic latitude of twenty degrees, then split off into two almost equally awesome continents of stars, the Vela Spur and Orion Spur.

  The ship moved on and on, putting the great mass of Orion Spur behind it, swinging past an elongated tangle of "hot hydrogen" clouds, heading toward the glittering sprawl of Perseus Arm, nearly at the rim. It did not move in a completely straight course, even in overdrive. The wheel of stars that was the galaxy was a rotating wheel, and relative positions altered constantly, and then the computers would clack and talk among themselves and change the course a little.

  In the bridge, Kimmel, the captain and co-owner of the craft, looked at the rep-chart's gleaming lights.

  "Everything seems all right," he said to Dilullo.

  The slight emphasis on "seems" was characteristic. Kimmel was a small, bald, nervous man who worried about things nearly all the time. He worried mostly about the ship taking any damage.

  Lots of Merc leaders had got so bored with Kimmel's worrying that they wouldn't sign with him. But Dilullo had known him a long while, and preferred a worrying captain to a carefree one. He knew that Kimmel, if anything threatened his precious ship, would fight like a lion.

  "Sure it's all right," he said. "Nothing to it. Just take us out to Perseus Arm and break out within normal-drive distance of Allubane."

  "And what then?" said Kimmel. "Have you looked at the S-Chart of that Allubane system? Rotten with drift, and the radar will likely be all fouled up by radio emissions from the hydrogen clouds there."

  "Cool hydrogen," Dilullo interrupted.

  "I know, I know; it's supposed to emit only on the twenty-first centimeter band, but if there's gas debris colliding with it, cool hydrogen can blow the radar faster than hot. And suppose it does just that?"

  "Suppose nothing of the sort," said Dilullo soothingly. "Just remember, Kimmel, I'm not going to do anything reckless—my skin is as dear to me as this old tub is to you."

  "Old tub?" cried Kimmel. He began an angry statement. Dilullo went away, a slight smile on his hard face. He had been steering Kimmel away from his worries by that approach for a long time, and the captain had not caught on yet.

  In his small cabin, Dilullo got out the papers that James Ashton had given him and studied them.

  He thought about four people.

  Dr. Martin Garcia, of the Cuernavaca School of Extra-Terrestrial Anthropology; S. Sattargh, exchange instructor from the University of Arcturus Three; Jewett McGoun, formerly a free-lance interstellar trader; and Dr. Jonas Caird of the Foundation of Extra-Terrestrial Sciences in New York.

  He looked the names over again. There was one of them that did not seem to fit.

  Jewett McGoun, free star-trader. What was he doing with four scientists?

  Dilullo read further in the notes that James Ashton had made for him. And after a while he muttered,'' Ah-huh.''

  It was Jewett McGoun who had first told Randall Ashton about something big and wonderful in the Closed Worlds. He had, so Randall had averred, brought solid evidence of his story. But Randall would not show this evidence to his brother and he would not tell the exact nature of what he was going after.

  "You wouldn't believe me," Randall Ashton had said. "But I'll tell you how big it is—it could absolutely revolutionize the exploration of the universe."

  More than that he would not say. And so they had gone eagerly off to Allubane ... four questing scientists and Mr. Jewett McGoun.

  It smelled, Dilullo thought. It smelled at him right off the pages of these notes.

  There had long been a story, told by many another like old Donahue, of a great secret in the Closed Worlds. It probably had been dreamed up just because the Closed Worlds were closed.

  But take that story and build on it, contrive phony evidence, then present the whole thing to an enthusiastic student of the extra-terrestrial who also happened to be a millionaire, and you could toll him off to Allubane. And once you had him there, there were a good many different ways by which you might enrich yourself from him.

  But if McGoun had only been selling a phony story about something big in the Closed Worlds, why did the Starwolves fear to go there?

  "Ah, curse that Chane," muttered Dilullo. "He can spoil anything, even a good theory."

  The ship went on and on, for one ship-day after another, and it seemed that it was going to rush through overdrive for an eternity, until finally there came a time when the siren hooted.

  Dilullo thought, It's about time, and went up from his cabin, heading for the bridge. He passed the small cubby where Chane was doing substitute duty for the radar man.

  He stuck his head in and said, "You haven't been bored, have you, Chane?"

  Chane gave him a bright smile. "Now why would I be bored? Here I am, in a ship going almost half as fast as a Varnan ship would go, crawling along, at a pretty good clip. Why in the world would I be bored?"

  Dilullo grinned a little. "That's good to hear. But just in case you have been bored, I rather imagine there'll be some action soon. And, Chane ..."

  "Yes?"

  "You'll be happy to know that if there is any action, anything really dangerous, I'll see to it that you're right in the forefront. Are you grateful?"

  Chane said between his teeth, "I'm grateful, you old so-andso."

  Dilullo was laughing a little when he reached the bridge. He had no sooner reached it than the siren hooted the second warning. He grabbed a stanchion as the ship went out of overdrive.

  The lights went dim and the whole fabric of the vessel seemed to shudder and dissolve. So did Dilullo's personal being. No matter how often he went through this, he never lost the moment of panic fear, the conviction that his shredded atoms were dispersed for all time and could never be gathered again. It was like the old ancestral falling-dream, only infinitely worse. Then, as always
, they hit bottom, the transition was over, and they were in normal space again.

  They were just outside the edge of the Perseus Arm. It was one thing to call it that, to mark it on the map as one of the outer spirals of the galaxy. It was another thing to be there, to look out the viewport at the titanic coast of stars, high as heaven and flaring as hell.

  "Now, David," said Kimmel. "Now let us go on."

  Dave Mattock, the pilot, shoved the control levers and the ship started moving toward the nearest star in the Arm, a topaz-colored sun.

  Mattock was renowned among Mercs for two reasons. One was that he chewed tobacco. Hardly anyone had used tobacco in any form for a long time; there were mild drugs that were much safer and just as sedative. Almost no one had actually chewed the stuff for decades, but as a boy, Mattock had been taught the habit by a rapscallion old grandfather in the Kentucky hills, and he had never given it up.

  The other reason Mattock was famous was that he had never lost his temper with Kimmel. It had been said often in Merc Hall that when Mattock quit piloting, Kimmel would have to retire, for no other pilot would be able to take the worrying captain.

  "Easy, easy!" cried Kimmel. "We've got to take this system carefully. Remember what I told you about those cool hydrogen clouds. And that drift ... that terrific drift ..."

  Mattock, a large powerful man with a large, rock-jawed face, paid not the slightest attention. He chewed, and he moved the controls.

  "Godalmighty, David, are you trying to pile us up?" cried Kimmel. He was almost dancing up and down now, leaning over Mattock's shoulder, reading the dials, not quite wringing his hands but almost doing that. "We've lots of time, lots of time ..."

  Mattock spat, with ringing accuracy, at the plastic pail in the corner that was a fixture when he was on the bridge. He said nothing.

  "Ah, that's it ... that's it ... careful does it," squeaked Kimmel. "After all, David, we want to be careful, don't we? That's a good careful boy ..."