Starwolf (Omnibus)

by Edmond Hamilton

  A queer uneasiness came upon Chane. For a time he did not understand what caused it. Then he remembered. The last time he had moved like this, in his spacesuit, alone in the drift, it had almost been his death. He had been wounded, exhausted, with the Starwolves hunting him, and he had seemed to float all solitary in the universe with the bright eyes of the suns of Corvus Cluster pitilessly watching him. Only the fact that his signal had brought Dilullo's Merc ship had saved him.

  "To the devil with it," Chane muttered to himself. "That's past history."

  He forced himself to shrug off the feeling, to get on with his job, to impel himself deeper into the drift, keeping clear of jagged meteors and unhuman stone faces that bore down upon him. But wherever he pointed his analyzer, it seemed that there was nothing any good.

  "Chane," said Dilullo's voice inside his helmet, startling him.

  "Yes?"

  "Return to ship."

  "John, I haven't got hardly a thing," said Chane.

  "The others have," answered Dilullo. "Come on back."

  Chane, as he forsook the search and cut in his impeller to highest power, was not sorry to lift up out of the majestic never-ending parade of stone faces that moved forever through the drift.

  As he shot in front of one of the great faces that was bearing down on him, he turned and made a disrespectful sound toward it.

  In the hold of the ship, he put down the small chunks of ores he had brought along in his net carrier.

  "You got less than any of us!" Sekkinen said loudly to him. "You, the professional rock-hopper."

  Sekkinen was a tall, rawboned man who had the habit of saying emphatically just what he thought. He did not much like Chane.

  Chane shrugged. "You just had beginners' luck. I didn't. That's the way it goes."

  He looked around at the haul, glistening chunks of stone and metal, frosty with the utter cold of infinity.

  "It's not very much," he said.

  "A good chunk of terbium, some palladium, and a few of the rare C-20 ores," said Dilullo. "No, it doesn't amount to much. But we'll get more as we go on."

  They went on. The little ship crept perilously along the coast of one of the dark nebulae that dimmed the Argo Spur. Its main analyzer probed ahead, seeking treasure. Nothing.

  They crept on and on, still coasting that enormous cloud. Finally there came a time when Bollard, who handled the big analyzer, said sourly, "I've got it ... but you won't like it."

  They didn't like it. It was a dead star, with a pocket of rare transuranic element on it, such as a burned-out sun sometimes creates during the long aeons of its dying.

  When they had landed and were sweating in their special heavy-gray suits to cut the ore, there was a grumble from

  Janssen, ordinarily the lightest-hearted of the Mercs.

  "I don't much like this place."

  Chane agreed. To a spaceman, the great suns were the blazing, radiating life of the universe. It was an oppressive thing to stand upon the corpse of a star.

  The vast dark cindery plain, rising into low ridges of slag, was somber and sad beneath the starry sky. They cut away with the ato-torches, but even with the mechanical-assist devices built into the heavy-grav suits every move they made was toilsome. Chane was used to heavy gravity, but nothing this heavy. Through the helmet-intercom he could hear Bollard puffing noisily.

  "Chane," said Bollard, "this is a pretty clever plan you dreamed up, collecting precious ores to take with us to Mruun."

  "I thought it was pretty clever," Chane said.

  "Just do me a favor," said Bollard, "and next time don't get clever at the expense of my aching back."

  They finally got the ore into the hold and left the dead star. Again they coasted the enormous dark nebula, using the probe of the analyzer on every likely-looking mass of drift within range, but with no result.

  They angled away from the cloud and soon made passage through a mighty triplet of blazing suns, two of them yellow and the third a yellowish green. Chane knew them well, for they were a famous starmark on the old Varnan road.

  Chane had told Dilullo about a freak star-system beyond this triplet, and they pulled cautiously toward it. It was one of the curious systems found here and there which mothered comets instead of planets. A bewildering shoal of elliptical comets spun about the white star, looking like brilliant moths around a flame.

  The ship drove through them. Comets were a large bunch of nothing, except for a possible nucleus of meteoric material, but they could play the devil with instruments. Dilullo took it cautiously, and finally set them down on one of the asteroids, the nearest thing to a planet this sun possessed.

  No rock-hoppers had been here, and the first sweep of the analyzer located terbium and tantalum. In a comparatively short time they had what they needed in the hold and Dilullo was feeling his way back out through the comets.

  "And now," he told Chane in his cabin later, "Mruun. And it's up to you to find the Singing Suns."

  Chane looked at him. "You don't much like this one, do you,John?"

  "Let's say," answered Dilullo, "I don't much like the Argo Spur. Its name is a stink and an abomination in the galaxy, and not only just because the Starwolves lair there."

  It was on the tip of Chane's tongue to ask why he had come if he felt that way, but he did not ask. He knew why Dilullo had come.

  "Well," said Chane, "it may cheer you up to hear that while we'll all be in danger at Mruun, I'll be in a special added danger."

  "At the moment, that does sort of cheer me up," said Dilullo.

  Chane grinned. "I thought it would."

  IV

  In the steamy, suffocating night of Mruun, the big city throbbed with life and sound. Going through its crowded streets with Chane, Dilullo thought that although he had been on many queer worlds, he had never seen anything like this before.

  The Mruunians themselves might have been human once.... Earthmen had discovered when they first got the star-drive that they had had predecessors, a forgotten star-traveling human race that in the remote past had seeded much of the galaxy with humanity. But time and evolutionary pressures had changed the original stock in many ways. The natives of Mruun were now gray-skinned, Humpty-Dumpty types with big pot bellies, small short legs and narrow faces. They were extremely polite as they waddled through the streets, and their faces had a calm malice in them; Dilullo did not like them at all.

  But the gray natives were only a part of the incredibly motley crowd that thronged under the lurid orange lights of these bazaar streets. Beaked and feathered men strode along, regarding everything with unwinking yellow eyes. Bulky, white-skinned creatures with elephantine legs smiled blandly as they went along. There were some who wore cloaks and hoods as though they did not want to show their bodies at all. Then over the buzz and hum of the street came an outburst of yelping laughter as a bunch of furry near-men who looked like big bear-dogs walking erect swayed drunkenly into a tavern.

  "They're from Paragara," Chane said. "Not a bad lot but not very good with spaceships."

  "They look to me," said Dilullo, "like a lot of country boys who have come to the wicked city and are about to be taken for all they have."

  Chane nodded. Dilullo noticed that as Chane went along, carrying their sack of ore samples easily with one hand, his eyes kept shifting here and there over the throng, his dark face wary and alert.

  He remembered what Chane had said to him when they had left the Merc ship at the spaceport.

  "I'm known as a Starwolf on Mruun, John. Not only by old Klloya-Klloy, to whom I've sold a lot of loot, but by others here, including off-worlders. That's why I don't want anyone but you with me, or the Mercs are likely to find out all about me."

  It had taken all Dilullo's authority to keep the others confined to the ship, but he had managed it by his assertion that they were needed to guard the ship and its equipment on this thieves' market world. Looking at the faces of this crowd, faces human and nonhuman but nearly all steeped in the wick
edness of the Spur worlds, Dilullo felt that his assertion had not been far wrong.

  Drinking places from which loud voices spoke, barked, or howled, cook-shops from which drifted odors that were partly delectable and partly nauseous, brothels where God knew what went on ... the place made any of the Star Street quarters of the main galaxy look like a kindergarten. He was glad when they got into a less crowded section of large shops. They were mostly shut at this hour, but their barred windows displayed silks and jewels and outlandish sculptures, loot of many raided worlds sold here quite openly.

  Chane casually turned down a narrow and dark side way. He glanced around as they went, but there was no one in sight. He darted suddenly off the dark street into a still darker area behind the buildings that housed the shops.

  Dilullo, following him, said, "And what the devil are we going to do here?"

  "Keep your voice down, John," whispered Chane. "I am going to engage in a bit of burglary and you are going to wait for me, that's what we're going to do."

  "Burglary? That's nice," said Dilullo. "Do you mind telling me what you're going to steal?"

  "You promised to let me run this operation," Chane said. "All will be explained to you. But to ease your conscience, stealing is considered the highest form of art on Mruun, and nearly everything in all these shops is stolen property."

  He hunkered down and in the darkness Dilullo could see that he was fishing something out of the sack of samples. It was a small cylindrical object which Chane fastened to his coverall by a clip. He touched it and it began a faint, almost inaudible buzzing.

  "An alarm-damper," said Chane. "Every one of these places is guarded in ways you can't imagine, but I think this will take me through the first beams without setting them off."

  "So this is what you were so busy making on our way here in the ship?"

  "This and a couple of other things," Chane said. "But there's one instrument I can't possibly make, and that's what I have to steal here. You see, this shop specializes in highly sophisticated instruments of crime."

  With that he was gone, moving like a shadow through the darkness to the back of the low building. Dilullo examined his stunner, and then sat down on the edge of the sample sack to avoid sitting on the damp ground.

  The air was oppressive, like a steam bath. There were few sounds here except the murmur of the distant uproar in the main streets. Dilullo mopped his face and wondered why in the world he should be sitting in this damp hellhole when he could have been taking his ease in Brindisi.

  Well, he knew the answer to that one and there was no use thinking about it, and he had better just sit and hope Chane didn't set off something that would get them both killed.

  After a few minutes he heard a low sound from the dark building, like the sound of a voice abruptly cut off. Dilullo jumped erect and stood with his stunner in his hand.

  Nothing happened. He stood there for what seemed quite a long time, and then a shadow came toward him. He could not identify the figure in the dark and he did not want to raise his voice in a challenge, so he just gambled that it was Chane coming back.

  It was. Chane held in his hand a cubical thing that looked like some kind of instrument. He squatted down with it, and rummaged in the sample sack until he found what he wanted and dragged it out. It-was a sheet of palladium, and Dilullo remembered how, on the way to Mruun, Chane had hammered on a sample of the metal to make that sheet.

  "If I'm not interrupting you ..." Dilullo said politely.

  "No interruption at all," said Chane. "What is it?"

  As he spoke he was bending the sheet of palladium and wrapping it all around the cubical thing he had brought out of the dark shop.

  "Were there guards in there?" Dilullo asked.

  "There were," said Chane. "Two of them. And to answer your next question, I didn't kill them. I was a good little Earthman like you said, and only stunned them."

  "Now what?" said Dilullo.

  Chane, working away in the dark, did not look up as he answered, "We want to know where the Singing

  Suns are. All right. There's only one merchant on Mruun big enough to buy them from the Starwolves, and if he didn't, he'll know who did. That's Klloya-Klloy, and he'll need a little inducing. That's what this instrument is for. You could call it an inducer."

  He finished wrapping the palladium sheet completely around the cubical box, and then put the thing down into the sack of ore samples and stood up.

  "You see," said Chane, "we'll be scanned from the moment we go into Klloya-Klloy's place. We'd never get past the first gate with this thing. But with the palladium wrapped around it, the scanner-rays will see it as just another ore sample."

  Dilullo shook his head. "Do you know, Chane, I'm kind of glad I came with you on this. It's educational. That's what it is, real educational."

  He expected Chane to lead him to one of the big shops in the bazaar, but instead Chane went through more dark side streets into an area of large villas. One of these had a high wall around its extensive grounds, and a gate in the wall with two enormous yellow men standing guard.

  Chane spoke to them in galacto, the lingua-franca of the galaxy. "We've something to sell. These are samples."

  "Weapons," said one of the guards, extending his hand.

  Chane handed over his stunner, and Dilullo followed his example, though he did not like doing it. He was sure from what Chane had said that from somewhere in the gatehouse beside them they and their sack were being thoroughly examined by scanning rays.

  A voice spoke a word from inside the guardhouse, and the yellow guards stood aside to let them enter.

  "Fallorians," said Chane as they walked toward the villa. "Real tough men. Klloya-Klloy has a lot of them."

  "You know," said Dilullo, "I'm beginning to wonder where my brains were when I came along with you."

  The villa was a big mansion, and there was the loom of even bigger warehouses in the grounds behind it. They went into a lobby that was garishly decorated with fabulous-looking art pieces from many worlds, all in utterly conflicting styles. A couple more of the huge yellow men lounged here, and a young Mruunian sat behind a desk.

  He said, "Ore samples, eh? I hope you have enough of the stuff to make it worth our while to bother."

  Chane said, "I'll talk that over with Klloya-Klloy."

  The Mruunian tittered maliciously. "Rock-hoppers wanting to deal personally with the master. What will we have next?"

  Chane smiled and reached across the desk and grabbed the Mruunian up out of his chair. "Tell Klloya-Klloy that Morgan Chane the Starwolf wants to see him, or I'll drive my fist right through you, little pudding."

  "Starwolf?" The Mruunian looked shaken. "Now I remember you. But—"

  A voice came from the communic on the desk. "I heard that. Let him in."

  A door opened at the far end of the lobby. Chane picked up his sack and Dilullo followed him into a surprisingly small office. The door closed silently behind them.

  In one of the dish-shaped things that passed for chairs on this world, an amazingly fat Mruunian sat, his whole obesity shaking with his laughter. But his small eyes remained cold.

  "Morgan Chane," he said. "Well, well, I heard that they ran you out of the Starwolves."

  "They did," said Chane. "And I took to prospecting, with some friends. And I found something big."

  "It would have to be big," said Klloya-Klloy. "You know me well enough from the old days ... I never touch anything small."

  "Wait till you see this," said Chane.

  He took out of the sack the square,palladium-wrapped object. He set it down on the desk before Klloya-Klloy. With his two hands he tore the palladium sheathing suddenly away, revealing a cubical instrument from which there extended a cord whose bifurcated tips ended in flat black metal disks.

  The instant he saw the instrument, Klloya-Klloy reacted violently. His chubby arm darted toward a row of buttons on the desk.

  Chane was too fast for him. With one hand he covered the
Mruunian's mouth, and his other arm encircled the obese body and pulled it, chair and all, away from the desk.

  Dilullo, utterly astonished, stood goggling. Chane hissed to him, urgently.

  "Quick, get the deherer disks over his head. One on each side. Quick!"

  Dilullo grabbed the cord and applied the disks to each side of the struggling Mruunian's head. The disks were connected by a spring that held them in place. Then, at Chane's direction, Dilullo snicked on the two switches in the side of the small cubical instrument.

  At once Klloya-Klloy stopped struggling. He sat stony still in the dish-like chair and his narrow eyes became glazed and expressionless.

  Chane let go of him and stepped back a little. Dilullo said, "I've heard of these things, though I never saw one. It's a shorter, isn't it?"

  Chane nodded. "It is. Shortcuts the will completely and makes truthful responses mandatory."

  "And the things are illegal on every world," said Dilullo.

  Chane smiled. "Nothing is illegal on Mruun. Now stand by."

  He turned and spoke to Klloya-Klloy. "Did the Varnans bring the Singing Suns to Mruun to sell?"

  Klloya-Klloy answered tonelessly, staring blank-eyed straight ahead. "Yes."

  "Did you buy them?"

  "I did not buy them. The sum was too great. I acted as agent."

  "To whom did you sell them?"

  "Eron of Rith, six. Iqbard of Thiel, four. Klith ..."

  He named off several names and the number of Suns purchased until they were all accounted for, ending up with, "...and the Qajars, ten."

  "The Qajars?" Chane frowned. "I never heard of them. Who are they? What is their world?"

  "A planet in the dark cluster DB-444 beyond the Spur."

  Chane's frown deepened. "There's no inhabited world in that cluster."

  KUoya-Klloy remained silent. No direct question had been put to him, so he made no answer.

  "Where is the cluster?" asked Dilullo. He was asking Chane, but Klloya-Klloy heard the question.

  "Celestial latitude and longitude are ..."