Redline the Stars sq-5

by Andre Norton

  we bring to him, both for Trade and for the rest of us

  personally. All we have to do is supply the materials, and he produces individual works of art. I've gotten in the habit of checking out anything that might conceivably be of interest as a result."

  "It can't hurt," the Cargo-Master said. He touched one of the packages he carried. "This local stuff's nice. I wouldn't object to having a few loose stones on hand."

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  That part of the big market given over to unmounted gems and the metals used to complement them was not exten-

  sive, and there was almost no variety in the type of jewels offered. Canuchean amethysts and red garnets made up more than 90 percent of the stock. Most of the rest consisted of surplanetary fancy garnets, all of them flawed and none of good color, much to the woman's disappointment.

  The remainder were various small, imported semiprecious gems common throughout the ultrasystem. There were no sunstones at all that day.

  The Free Traders bought a few stones, fewer than they might have if the quality had been better. All were single specimens. The sets, presorted packets containing from two gems to three dozen or more, they left alone. Most such lots were of very low grade, and they had plenty from which to choose at reasonable cost without having to settle for the patently inferior.

  One stand featuring them did catch Cofort's eye. It was a small, uncovered operation specializing in both imported and on-world stones plus a smattering of the more interesting readily available minerals. The array of colors was wonderful and was rendered more striking still by the masterful arrangement the merchant had employed to display his wares.

  She picked up several of the clear packets encasing his goods and held them high so that Halio's light might play over the contents before carefully replacing them again.

  When she seemed to linger over one lot labeled rose tourmalines, the Canuchean was quick to pick up on her apparent interest.

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  "Those have better than average color. They go for fifty a carat."

  The spacer's arched brows lifted even higher. "Hedon's Gem Guild wouldn't get that for stellar-quality synthetics, which these are not."

  The man drew himself to the full of his not inconsiderable height. "If they were stellar quality or anything approaching it; they wouldn't be selling in sets. As for the

  rest, these tourmalines are natural ... "

  "Save it for the locals," the Medic snapped. "Preferably

  the visually handicapped. It's painfully obvious that just about every stone on this table is manufactured. — If you wish to argue the point, Canuche has thoughtfully supplied appraisers to settle such disputes. Their booth's just

  over there. One of my comrades can fetch—"

  "Power down, space hound. I'm only a salesman, not a gemologist. It's as easy to fool me as anyone else. This stuff looked good to me, and I took it on faith, that's all." "Of course," she responded dryly. She had figured he would back down quickly under that threat. The official appraisers were noted for doing their job, and the penalties for fraud were severe. The merchant might have bluffed his way out of this, but he would then be under close observation for a very long time, which would seriously handicap the questionable enterprise he was running.

  "Look, I'll sell at a loss to prove my good intentions.

  Take what you want for ten a carat."

  "Ten? We do this for a living, too, remember? You got

  them for a quarter a carat, maybe half for a few of the best.

  You'll be making a good profit at one credit."

  "One! I won't be able to meet my rent!"

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  "Stow that debris, my friend. By rights, I shouldn't go higher than three-quarters. Besides, we're only taking a couple of sets as curiosities, one for me, one for my comrades to split. Synthetics like these wouldn't move too well, and I really don't believe your style of doing business deserves the reward of a big order."

  She looked over a number of the sets before selecting two, one containing all rose-colored stones, the other a mixture of rose and green. The gems in both were cut as cabochons rather than with light-firing facets.

  After watching carefully while the discomfited merchant weighed her selection, she paid him based upon the scale he had named and, much to his relief, withdrew with her companions.

  vofort caught the way Dane was looking at her and laughed. "You didn't think I had it in me, Viking?"

  He started. That was the nickname some of his more insufferable classmates back at the Pool had used to taunt him. There was no barb in it now, though. In fact, he rather liked the sound of it... "Well, you usually come across as a rather quieter individual."

  Her eyes sparkled. "I wasn't loud back there, either," she teased.

  "Neither are Patrol lasers," Jellico told her. "They make their point, too."

  Her manner grew grave again. "I didn't think Mr. Van Rycke would mind my taking the helm. The sum involved was infinitesimal, and one set is for me. I'll keep the other as well if you really don't want it."

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  "Not at all," replied the Cargo-Master. "As you said, it's a curiosity."

  "We'll see just how much of a curiosity when we get back to the Queen."

  There was such an air of mystery, of superiority, about her that his eyes narrowed. "That's where we're heading right now, Doctor Cofort. On all burners."

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  Van Rycke ushered his companions into his office. The panel had scarcely closed behind them before he turned to Rael. "All right. What treasure have you found for us amid the debris?"

  "Maybe none," she replied, as she accepted the shears he held out to her and slit open each of the packets. She spilled then- contents out in two carefully separated piles. "Which does the Queen want? The cost was the same."

  "The bicolored one."

  "Good choice," she said as she separated two pink stones from it. "These appear to be the only ones," she remarked after a few seconds' examination of the rest. A similar study of her own packet produced another prize, this one somewhat larger than the first two.

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  Rael peered closely at all three, holding them so that they caught the full of the bright light from the desk lamp.

  Her head rose in a gesture of triumph. "Star rubies," she announced. "Very old and unquestionably the real thing.

  They'll have to be tested for quality, but I suspect it's first rate."

  "So that's why you chose cabs rather than faceted stones," Miceal said softly.

  She nodded. "I'd spotted them right off. I couldn't be entirely sure Without examining them more carefully, but I knew I did have something out of the ordinary. I just had to be careful not to arouse his suspicion by paying too much attention to those particular sets." She made a wry face. "I'd probably have been vacuum-brained enough to tell him if that son hadn't tried to give us such a doing. Fifty credits a carat for those little mass-produced toys of his!"

  "What if we had refused the packet you picked up for us?" the Cargo-Master asked.

  The Medic answered Van Rycke, but it was Jellico's eyes that she met and held. "Temporary hand or permanent, I am part of this ship, and I'm entitled to your trust. I'd proven my knowledge of gems. If you couldn't go along with me blindly, or at least indulge my whim if you suspected nothing more, when the outlay was so insignificant, then you'd deserve to take your loss."

  "You'd have just held onto both packets and kept mum about the rubies?" Jan asked.

  "Naturally. What else would you expect me to do?"

  "Fair enough," the Captain said. "We were testing you.

  You had the right to return the compliment."

  Dane fingered the rubies, although he did not pick them

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  up. It would be too much like him to drop one of them—

  Cofort's probably—and send it skittering into some crevice from which it could not be extracted short of dismantling the ship.
"What're they worth?"

  "That I couldn't venture to say with certainty, not until they've been tested," she replied, "but if they're as good as they look, they're worth plenty. Mr. Van Rycke will be the better one to lay the proper valuation on them once he has the necessary information to do it."

  "They're old to judge by the way they've been polished, probably Terran . . ." The Cargo-Master stopped speaking.

  His breath caught. "Spirit of Space!"

  "What's the matter?" Miceal demanded.

  "Most of Terra's good star ruby sources were played out long ago, the best of them centuries ago, and there's never been anything to equal their output since anywhere in the Federation. If these stones originated in one of those old mines, we're looking at the stuff of legend. They'll go for whatever the market'll bear."

  "If we can locate that market," his Captain said gloomily.

  "Hedon. We keep our mouths shut and fire all our tubes to get there. Our small constellation here, our double star," he corrected, recalling that one of the three did not belong to the Queen, "could well pay for that voyage and a number of others after it even if we moved nothing else at all on any of them."

  "Do youreally think that's what we've got?" Rael asked in awe.

  "There's a very strong possibility of it. Doctor, judging by surface appearances at any rate. Neither this sheen nor this color has been around for a very long time."

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  "What if they aren't as old as we think or aren't from one of the famous Terran mines?" Thorson asked, trying to keep his head in the face of his superiors' enthusiasm.

  They had seen what seemed like real prizes turn sour before, and he did not want to work himself into the same pitch over what could be nothing more than an extremely costly shot at the next galaxy. A trip to Hedon of Eros was an expensive proposition, and they had nothing else whatsoever that they could hope to trade there. "They're not

  even very big."

  "About a carat each for ours. The Doctor's is half that weight again. That's not bad for a major gemstone. They're also dead matches for one another both in color and cut, and the Queen's two for size as well. That means we can bill them as a suite. No, provided they're natural, we have ourselves a treasure, whatever their age or source. — Assuming they're not hot, of course." Rael had been careful to secure documentation of the sale, but they would still get no profit in that event and would be out the cost of the

  voyage as well.

  Dane nodded, inwardly hoping that their "treasure" would at least prove of sufficient resale value to match the efforts they would have to expend to establish its authenticity and then dispose of it.

  The answer to that lay in the future, but there were other mysteries still to be resolved. He turned his attention to the woman. "How did you spot them, Rael? For that matter, how'd you know the rest were synthetics?"

  "Oh, by the color. Manufactured stones are subtly different from their natural counterparts. Usually, they're more intense than real ones, and the shade or tone's at least

  a wee bit off." She forestalled his next question. "How these came to be in those sets, I couldn't begin to say. They've probably been knocking around for a long time, moving from place to place with no one suspecting their true nature. All the gems in these two lots look like they were previously mounted. They were probably part of a large, low-value shipment gathered from all over the ultrasystem and split up into sets for resale at marginal profit."

  "That's more or less what I figure, too," the Cargo-Master agreed.

  There was a strange note in his tone, and she looked up to find him studying her intently. "What's wrong?" she asked in surprise.

  "I hesitate to use the word preternatural. Doctor. It's too melodramatic coming from anyone but Craig Tau. However, the stones on that stand were not the work of amateurs, The fact that they were synthetic would not have been instantly apparent to most of us, myself included, and I'm not precisely a novice at buying and selling such items. Add to that the fact that absolutely no one else I've ever known could possibly have smelled out that rats' nest and it rather makes me wonder about you."

  "That's only because you're judging by purely Terran standards," she told him calmly. "When*I introduced myself as Teague Cofort's sister, I should have been more specific. We're actually half-siblings. Our mothers were different. Very different. In point of fact, I'm a genetic impossibility."

  Her chin lifted. "I don't know Mother's race or home- world. My father just returned to the ship with her one day

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  after a short absence on some planet neither they nor his crew would ever name. She definitely was not of Terran blood, not human at all, although she was very beautiful by human standards. There were some significant physiological and genetic differences, incompatibilities. Marriage was possible between them. Conception should not have been and certainly not a viable birth. That notwithstanding, I was conceived, born, and have managed to thrive.

  "Like most intelligent beings, I have my own set of gifts and talents. Most seem to have come from my father, some from Mother, but none are of a nature to set me apart from the better part of the Federation's citizens. Whatever strengths I might have came by the time-honored means of determined effort and practice. If I hadn't been reared in an environment like space where the lack of other distractions does wonders for the ability to concentrate on a long course of study or training, I doubt I'd have achieved much with them at all, and even with that push, I'm a far voyage from being some sort of ultrawoman.

  "Admittedly, my senses are pretty acute, but there's nothing super-anything about them.

  "I do have a good feel for color and can differentiate between shades quite finely, but I learned that from our former Cargo-Master, Mara's predecessor. Other than that, my vision's not remarkable. — No pin spotting at ten miles or peering through titanone plates.

  "It's much the same with hearing. My sense of smell is keen, which is usually more disadvantage than blessing. I have trained myself to separate and identify different odors even when they're components in a melody. That's a bit uncommon, I suppose, but don't imagine I can perform like

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  a tracking or hunting animal, or you're in for a major disappointment.

  "Sensitivity to aroma and refined sense of taste go together. You can be sure that I appreciate Mr. Mura's fine hand with his seasonings and that I don't let many chances for a good feed of real food pass me by when they crop up."

  The expression of each of her companions brightened

  into a grin. That, at least, was typical of their kind. When

  a space hound hit the surface of a basically Terran-type

  planet and had some free time, it was almost inevitably to

  an eating place that he first hurried rather than to the local

  version of a Happy City.

  Rael did not smile. "The last sense I have is touch, and

  that's not terribly extraordinary, though I'll admit to preferring the feel of that Thornen silk to that of our uniforms.

  "There's nothing else," she continued firmly and a little wearily, "no sixth-plus powers. I don't read minds or see past or future or move solid objects by will alone."

  "What about conversing with animals?" Miceal asked quickly.

  "No," she said firmly. "I wish I could. They're often a galaxy nicer than our own kind. They like me because they know how much I like them. Maybe it's a little unusual," she conceded, "but it's nothing more than that. Plants, too, grow for me as they do for other gardeners who understand their ways and enjoy working with them. There's no particular magic in it."

  The Captain gave a slight shake of his head. "No go,

  Cofort. A lot of people like animals, but none of them affects Queex the way you do."

  Her eyes hardened, and a sharp edge turned her voice 1

  into a whip. "A lot of people love animals and take tri-dees of them, too, but they don't often get results like you've got tacked up on you
r office wall. Do you use some sort of compulsion to force your subjects to appear and then pose and freeze in place for you?"

  Jellico flushed so that the scar stood out white on his

  cheek, but he said nothing. The rebuke had been neatly

  delivered. It was not an overreaction, either. Had the Medic been a real member of the crew, it might have been different. There would have been strong bonds of trust and confidence between them then, though his right to pry would have been no greater. As it was, any admission of

  esper abilities could prove highly dangerous for Rael Co

  fort.

  Van Rycke cleared his throat. "I suppose I can consider myself answered," he said to break the uncomfortable silence that followed. "Well, whatever the extent of your talents, Doctor, we've got reason to be grateful to them. They've done good work all along and have topped it off by locating a potentially very nice prize for us."

  The Medic inclined her head in formal acknowledgment. "Thank you, Mr. Van Rycke."

  "We seem to be finished here," he said. "The day's Still young, and there's a good part of the market still left unexplored. — Thorson, you'd best stay here and classify our new acquisitions. Log it all in and stow everything."

  "Aye," Dane responded cheerfully. He had been anticipating that.

  "Doctor Cofort may be able to give you a hand later,"

  Jellico suggested.

  He glanced at the woman. "Write up a report about these

  rubies now, while the details're fresh in your memory.

  Describe the purchase in full and put down all our surmises, clearly labeled as such. Just in case those stones should prove to be hot, I want as much documentation on hand as possible to attest to our innocence."

  "Aye, Captain. — I'll just say we bought the sets by chance, though, if you don't mind. We're doing this to settle potential questions, not raise more."

  "Handle it however you think best. If I want more or something different, I'll tell you when I see the report."

  The four dispersed. Dane and Van Rycke hurried to be about their work.