Starwolf (Omnibus)

by Edmond Hamilton

  It was not directly beneath him. It was the second window to the left, two levels down.

  Chane estimated distances by the lightning flashes. He did it as carefully as he could, for everything depended on his estimate.

  When he felt sure, he took his long tape and tied one end to the heavy bench. About two-thirds of the way to the other end he tied a loop big enough to get his foot into. Then he dropped the tape out of the window.

  There was one more thing to do before he went. On a table lay the deck of cards which the Mercs had been allowed to keep, alone of all their personal possessions, and with which they beguiled their captivity.

  Chane took a card and, with the tongue of his belt-buckle, scratched white letters on the colored back. Only a few words, telling Dilullo that he was going in an attempt to help them get out of this, and that he would be back.

  No more than that. Another Merc than Dilullo might read this first. He put the card down conspicuously apart from the pack and then went back to the window.

  By the flashes he tried to see if there was anyone in the wooded grounds of the old palace. He could see no one and he hoped he was right because he was about to show up as clearly as a fly on a white wall. He twisted his shoulders into the enlarged opening.

  He thought at first he was not going to get through. He backed off and tried again, letting one shoulder go first. This time he made it, barely. He grabbed the tape, drew out the rest of his body, clamped his feet on either side of the tape, and then slid slowly down until his feet felt the knot of the loop.

  Chane got his right foot into the loop. He would have liked to pause for another breather but he was too conspicuous hanging up here in the glare of the ever-increasing lightning-flashes.

  He began to swing himself, gripping the tape to pull it in and then letting go of it. He swung parallel to the wall and so close to it that his fingers, gripping the tape, rasped painfully against the stone. Chane swore but kept swinging. He thought with grim amusement that he would be a damned outlandish sight if anyone saw him.

  Lightning washed the wall every half-minute now. The thunder had become deafening. He hoped that the close approach of the storm would have discouraged anybody from being out of doors.

  He swung wider and wider until at last he was swinging just below the edge of the window he wanted. Chane gripped the stone sill with his fingers and then slowly drew his head up to look inside.

  The window was a good-sized one, there being no need for precaution as in the detention wing. The plastic pane was closed against the coming tempest.

  It was the right room, the big barny stone room gauded with tasteless trappings that was Eron's idea of an audience chamber. It was softly lighted, and two of the runty, red-skinned men bearing lasers strolled to and fro in it.

  Chane had expected that. It seemed that Eron kept some of his treasures in this place, and he would not leave them unguarded.

  He waited, hanging onto the windowsill, until both guards had their backs to him. Instantly Chane drew himself up until he crouched in the deep window-opening.

  He braced his feet against the stone. With all the Varnan speed and strength he possessed he hurled himself forward, and the light plastic pane went flying into the room.

  The two Rith guards swung around. They were fast but no one was as fast as a Starwolf, and Chane reached them as they first began to raise their lasers.

  He hit one man with a clean punch, saw him drop, and kept on without stopping his movement. The second man had got his laser almost to the firing position. Chane's fist opened, became a hand, grabbed the barrel of the laser and slammed it upward with tremendous force into the guard's face. It hit the man's forehead like a hammer. He let go his end of it and fell down.

  Chane examined them. They were both unconscious. He tore strips from one of the florid hangings and carefully bound and gagged them. It seemed a waste of time, but he could not kill these men. He would be leaving Dilullo and the other Mercs captive here, and if he killed any Rith, John and the others would suffer for it.

  And there was no question, there never had been any question, that he could take the others with him. One man, himself, alone, might make it out of the palace and to the spaceport without being caught, but not the whole mob of them.

  If his plan worked, and worked in time, he might save them. If it did not ...

  No use worrying about them now. Chane sprang to the cabinet from which Eron had taken the tridim pictures.

  It was locked, and the lock was strong and good.

  A swiftly-gathering roar came from outside as the rain arrived. Chane set his teeth and forced himself to work calmly and deliberately with the lock. He had Jo have those pictures if his mission was to have any chance of success. They were the only means of proving at Varna that his whole story of the Qajars and their treasures was true.

  He was clever with locks; nearly every Starwolf was. He found the combination, opened the door, and a moment later had the thick little plastic pictures in his hand. He stuffed them into his pocket, ran to the window, and started to slide down the rope to the ground.

  The rain smashed him with solid masses of water. He had seen Rith rain before, God knew, but he had never felt it. Its piledriver blows knocked him down along the rope like a toy monkey on a string. He hit the ground with a bang.

  Chane had thought that the rain would be an ally, keeping people inside and helping to hide his movements. He found out now that with an ally like this he did not need an enemy.

  The rain pounded him, trying to inlay him into the muddy ground. He breathed incautiously and got solid water up his nose. He snorted it out, shielded his nose with one hand, and finally managed to get to his feet and stand shakily erect under the downpour. It was like standing under a waterfall.

  He could see almost nothing. Only the fact that the wall of the palace was against his back told him it was there at all. He clung to it, orienting himself, he knew the direction in which the spaceport lay but he was afraid that when he let go of the wall he would lose all sense of where he was.

  Still, he could not stand here shivering. He had to make his try. He fixed his mental compass reading and started walking.

  A man could not go far in this. It was a battle to stay on his feet, a battle to move at all. Sometimes he went on all fours until some chance shelter let him rise again. He was blinded, deafened, dazed, strangled. The only thing that kept him moving was his Starwolf pride. A man would give up, he kept saying to himself, but not me, not a Varnan.

  He bumped into a stone wall. He was in a street now, and it seemed, as far as he could guess, to lead in the direction he wanted. He staggered along it like a blind man in the stunning rain, one hand trailing along the building walls of the street side.

  He was never able to tell later how long he had struggled forward. When the guiding wall ended he knew that he was out of the small capital of Rith. But which way now?

  There would be lights at the starport but he could not see them. He could not see anything. He thought he might as well take a chance and go on in what he thought was the right way.

  He did, and got nowhere except to a growing realization of failure. His head was so dazed by the impact of the downpour that when it began to lessen he did not at first realize it.

  The rain slacked off until it was no more than a heavy cloudburst on Earth. And he caught the watery gleam of lights not far away to his left.

  His knees went weaker still with relief. It was the starport, only a few hundred yards away.

  And now he had to hurry. If the storm slackened any more he would be caught flat out. He took a deep breath and began to run.

  He went straight onto the starport, running. He might be tripping a warning beam, but it had not seemed to him that the Riths were as hipped on security as all that, and anyway, he had to take the chance.

  He heard no alarms. And suddenly out of the sheets of rain there loomed a vague but familiar outline.

  Their Merc ship, with
its typical Terran eyebrow bridge. He could not see anyone around but he sheered away from it even so. He knew the ship was guarded; the guards would be inside now, sheltering from the storm.

  The Merc ship gave him his bearings. He angled away, passing the vague bulks of other ships, until he came to a much smaller craft: the scout in which he and Dilullo and Gwaath had made their ill-fated journey to the Qajar world.

  He had thought it would still be here, knowing that it would take at least a couple of days to service it. He opened the airlock and went inside, ready to attack if anyone was there.

  Nobody was. There was no particular necessity to mount a guard here, and it had not been done.

  Chane closed the lock and got the lights on. He shook himself like a half-drowned dog, and got busy.

  The scout had been serviced. Good. He got into the pilot's chair, sitting with runnels of water dripping from him to the deck.

  He took the scout up and away from Rith as fast as it would go, giving not a damn for any precautions. He came up into clear space and set his course. Far away but bright, ahead of him, shone the tawny star of Varna.

  He had tried to be a good Earthman with the Mercs. But he was not a good Earthman. He was a Starwolf, and he was going home.

  XI

  He would know, he though.t, within the next twenty-four hours which it was to be—life... or death.

  The scout had dropped out of overdrive and the great golden sun blazed huge before him, and the blue and copper ball of Varna came around it toward him, as though to welcome him. But what kind of welcome would he find there?

  He knew the watch that was kept and he was expecting the challenge which at a certain moment came from the communicator.

  He answered, "Morgan Chane, coming into Krak starport, in a Rith scout."

  There was a long moment of silence and then a shocked, astounded voice said, "Morgan Chane?"

  "Yes."

  Another slence, and then the voice said, "All right. Come on in ... if you want to!"

  Chane smiled grimly. He might not last long on Varna but it seemed that he was going to be a sensation while he did.

  He drove the little scout downward and it seemed to him that he fell swimming in a cataract of the tawny golden sunshine. Of a sudden he felt unbeatable, unconquerable. He knew that this was only the euphoria of coming home and he laughed at it in his own mind, but he could not help it.

  It was spring on Varna and the great arid planet had a surface of pale green instead of the usual burnt gold and brown. And there came up the metallic-looking oceans and the green lands, and finally the far-scattered sprawl of dull red stone that was Krak.

  On the broad starport the neat squadrons of small, needle-shaped ships were drawn up, glinting in the golden sunshine. It was all as it had always been.

  Only it was not....

  All the feeling of long nostalgia left Chane. He became wary and cold. It was all very well to come back home, but there were those at home who wanted very earnestly to kill him, and he must forget emotions if he was to live.

  When he had landed and cracked the lock he stepped out into the hot dry sunlight. The heavy gravitation of Varna grabbed him and almost staggered him. He had been away from Varna for quite a time and he had to get used all over again to the drag which had so nearly killed him as a child. It reminded him that he had no advantage here, that he was merely one Starwolf among many, and not the strongest.

  He stood there beside the Rith scout, listening to the cracking sounds as it cooled.

  Then he saw a man striding out toward him. Berkt, he said to himself.

  All of the Starwolves walked proud, but none in quite so tall and proud a way as Berkt. He was one of the greatest of the leaders, who had raided more worlds than Chane had seen.

  He came closer, tall and mighty, the light golden down of his body hair glistening in the sun with only a leather harness to cover it. His slanted, uptilted eyes, pale as agates, bored into Chane's.

  "I didn't believe it," he said. "I was seeing to the refitting of my ship, and I heard it, but I didn't believe it.'

  "Hello, Berkt," said Chane.

  Berkt disregarded the greeting. He looked at Chane and he said, "Now understand me, Morgan Chane. I don't particularly care whether you get killed or not."

  Chane nodded.

  "But," said Berkt, "I feel I should tell you that almost the whole clan of the Ranroi, Ssander's clan, is on Varna right now. If you want to live, take your ship and go."

  He added, "I think you know why I'm giving you this warning."

  Chane nodded again. He knew.

  Berkt was years older than he was. He had never particularly liked Chane, though he had had no particular dislike for him.

  But Chane could remember the time when he was a small boy; when his father, the Reverend Thomas Chane of Carnarvon, Wales, Earth, and his wife had still been living.

  Two rather small people who had come to Varna as missionaries, to reform the wicked Starwolves. They had, of course, got nowhere at all. Nobody came to their pathetic little chapel except curious Varnan children. The mature Varnans just ignored them.

  Except Berkt. He had not had the smallest shred of religion, any more than any of the Varnans had. But he was, even in those days, a leader of great courage and renown. And Berkt had seen courage in the slight, small figure of the Reverend Thomas Chane. This little Earthman, who with his wife was slowly dying from the heavy gravitation of Varna, but who would not give up, who would not go away, held to his mission until they both were dead.

  The most unlikely of friendships, Chane had thought of it later. The mighty young Starwolf lord, and the frail little man who had come from Earth to preach. He could remember, from his boyhood, his father's glowing face as he talked, sitting on the bench in front of the little chapel, and with a tall young Berkt sitting beside him, gravely listening, not pretending to agree but never contradicting.

  "You've got your father's courage," Berkt was saying. "And I see you have his stubbornness. What the hell are you doing on Varna?"

  "It's a rather long story," said Chane.

  Berkt said, "You don't have that long. You're a dead man if you don't go away."

  "I am not going away," said Chane. "I have something to tell the Council."

  "Fine," said Berkt, looking disgusted. "Well, I'll give you a drink or two before you're killed. Come along."

  Chane walked with him across the starport. It was a long walk, because this main starport of Varna was a big one. For this was the home nest from which the falcon ships of the Starwolves raided out across the galaxy.

  A roaring thunder echoed from the brassy heavens, stretching far away across the starport. Big, powerful machines were hammering and probing at ships that had come back from raids with wounds in their sides. Power units throbbed, raged, and sometimes coughed and died, as they were repaired and tested. Heavy truck-carriers rumbled between the ships, taking supplies. There was a deafening roll and crash across the sky as a squadron of five needle-shaped ships came in for landing after a test flight. ... He knew it was a test flight from their formation and from the fact that none of them had scars on their sides.

  There were hundreds of ships, thousands of Varnans, on this port, and all of the men were busy at their work. The work of the Starwolves was robbery, the far-flung raids across the galaxy that had made them famous and infamous, and they loved their work and toiled as industriously as bees to make sure that when they went forth on a job of stealing by force, none of their ships or equipment would let them down.

  But the work slowed, almost stopped, where Berkt and Chane walked between the ships. Chane was, and always had been, a standout here, for his dark, compact form and his coverall garment were quite different from the gold-haired, harness-clad figures of the Varnans. They knew him when they saw him; there were not too many on Varna who had not heard about the Earthman Starwolf, and it seemed also that they knew what had happened to him, for they stared at him in incredulous wond
er.

  "They just can't believe," said Berkt, "that you were crazy enough to come back."

  Chane shrugged. "I'll admit it must look that way to them."

  Berkt looked at him curiously. "Where have you been all this time, anyway?"

  "With the Mercs," said Chane. "They picked me up when I was about half-dead from the wound Ssander gave me, and I joined them."

  "Then they didn't know that you were really a Varnan? They couldn't have known, or they'd have hung you."

  "One knows," said Chane. "Not the others."

  "I've heard of these Mercs," said Berkt. "Are they any good?"

  Chane turned and looked at him as they walked. "They're not as good as the Varnans; they haven't got the Varna-bred bodies for it. But they're good. Good enough to outfox a Varnan squadron in Corvus Cluster."

  They came out of the starport, and Berkt had a car. It was not like the cars of Earth, soft-riding and smooth and silent. It was a vehicle as tough as the Varnans themselves, and it went over the rough roads outside the starport—What? A Starwolf labor on roads?—with a jolt that Chane remembered and enjoyed.

  They went up and down the rocky, craggy hills. Varna was a poor world, which was why its sons, when they had attained starflight, had gone out to loot the rest of the galaxy. The golden sun was declining and its rays lit the harsh landscape. Down there below the hills was the city, Krak, but there was not much of it. A great market-square with buildings of dull red stone around it, but the Varnans, who had the freedom of the stars, did not much enjoy living crammed together.

  The lords of Varna, such as Berkt, had their keeps and strongholds of stone set well apart from each other, preferably on the tops of the rocky hills. It was the lesser ones and the young men who lived in the city, as Chane had once lived in the stone barracks down there.

  The car jolted on and approached a stone wall. They went through its gateway, and before them was the rambling pile of reddish stone that was Berkt's home.

  A tall golden woman came out to greet the noisy approach of the car, and then she forgot her husband to stare at Chane.