Chai appeared again, beckoning. He followed her into what at first appeared to be trackless jungle, and then became indubitably a path, narrow and carefully concealed with vines. He did not bother to ask her how she had found it, and she could not have told him anyway. It seemed to go in the right direction, toward the landing field, bypassing the town. It was a very odd sort of trail, obviously not much used, but carefully kept clear.
They hurried along it, and now Chai carried the pillar club dragging from one hand because it caught in the creepers above and on both sides. She would have dropped it, only Kettrick said no. Apart from Nillaine's little knife, it was the only weapon they had.
When they were, as near as he could judge, about even with the village and some distance east of it, they came to a cleared space not over ten feet in diameter. At one side of it was a little squat structure of heavy plastic sunk deep into the ground. Just recently it seemed to have been completely covered with vines and sods of mossy turf. These had been torn away and the top of the structure opened, revealing a metal-lined cavity below.
Something had rested there, like a strange jewel in an improbable case.
He set Nillaine down and held her by the shoulders. "Where?" he asked her. "Where will they take it?"
"I don't know. Seri wouldn't tell us." And then she cried out, "You can't stop him! How can you stop him when nobody knows where he's going?"
She covered her face with her hands, and they went on.
Kettrick was sure now that the path led to the landing field, and it did. They emerged from an innocent, vine-curtains section of the jungle wall no different from any other section, and there was Grellah shoving her dark rusky bulk into the sky, perhaps half a mile away. The little booths of the trading fair seemed to have packed up and gone away from around her feet.
"Let me go now," Nillaine whispered.
And Kettrick said, "Not yet."
He started out across the landing field with Chai, running over the black scars of old flames, stumbling on calcined rock and ridges of glassy slag like cheap obsidian, flawed and stained. He had gone only a little way when he heard the tumult of many people pouring down the broad path from the village.
They burst out from the avenue of trees to his left, far to his left but closer than he was to the ship, a bright-colored spate of running, leaping, shouting, crying men and women that spread and fanned across the landing field toward him. They carried knives and other things, but that many would not need weapons. In the end they could pull him and Chai to pieces with their little hands, like monkeys.
Grellah's hatches were all closed. He filled his lungs once and cried despairingly, and after that he kept his breath for running.
His legs were longer than theirs. But they ran swiftly. Their legs scampered like those of children in some wild game that would end only when they dropped exhausted.
He could have run faster without Nillaine. Nevertheless he clung to her as a last desperate resort until he saw Grellah's hatch slide open, and Boker and Hurth came out of it with two of the bell-mouthed heavy rifles that fired stun-gas shells. They began to fire into the forefront of the crowd. Puffs of dark vapor blossomed and spread. The movement of the crowd became suddenly broken and erratic. Kettrick paused and set Nillaine on her feet.
"You will never be strong," he told her. "Your brains are like feathers, and you have no more purpose than birds."
She appeared not to have heard him. She only whispered. "You have killed us, Johnny. You have killed us."
Chai let the pillar fall in the blackened dust beside Nillaine. She and Kettrick ran on and left her there, a tiny drooping figure by the profaned fruits, her blue silk garment soiled and torn, the flowers tangled in her hair. Her cheeks were dirty with tears and one small hand was streaked with Kettrick's blood.
Kettrick climbed the ladder with Hurth and Boker hauling at him and Chai pushing from behind. He heard the hatch shut and the warning hooter start to blow. He groped his way blindly to his seat, his own eyes hot with a stinging moisture.
The Doomstar poisoned more than suns.
11
They were in jump again. There was the same sweating heat, the whine and hum of the unit, the blindness of not-space. They had gone into jump long before the prescribed distance out from Gurra had been reached on conventional, impelled by a great desire to hide themselves in this nothingness where no star could shine at all.
Now Boker was doing a second and much more careful job of patching up the cut on Kettrick's back. The others hunched about on the bridgeroom seats, Glevan looking gloomily triumphant, While Hurth, like Boker and Kettrick, looked just plain scared.
"They tried to get us to leave the ship," Boker was saying, for perhaps the third time. "Wanted us to come in and have a feast, and I guess we'd have gone if you hadn't said that about sticking close. Funny. Even though I thought there was something wrong…"
"You warned me," said Kettrick.
"I know. But I guess I couldn't quite believe."
Kettrick felt the sting of the antibiotic and shook his head. "Neither could I."
"They'd have killed us all," said Glevan. He leaned forward, his intense dark eyes fixed on Kettrick. "So Seri has the Doomstar."
Kettrick said, "I think rather he has a part of it. A component. I saw the hiding place, and it was small."
Glevan said heavily, "How great a thing does it take to kill a star?"
"Oh, shut up that bull," said Hurth. "Something bigger than what Johnny said, it would have to be." He pulled at his white mane with nervous fingers and laughed a curious little laugh. "And here I am talking about the damned thing as though it was ordinary as cheese and a few hours ago I didn't even believe it existed."
"Neither did I," said Kettrick. "Not really."
Only a myth, said the mocking voice in his dream, echoing his own carelessness. He thought of Seri, somewhere ahead of them in space, speeding somewhere with his load of death, and suddenly he was furious.
"He used my name," he said. "He used my friendship with those people." Another thought struck him. "I wonder how many more of my friends he's bribed and frightened and lied into helping him."
"There must be more," Boker said. "That would make good sense. They couldn't keep the whole mechanism together, whatever it is; it'd be too dangerous, too likely to be found. And whatever stuff it is they use to, well, to make the change in the sun cycle, they wouldn't want that around, either. I'll bet they've got caches scattered all around the Cluster, a bit here and a piece there, so it could never all be found and destroyed before they were ready to use it."
He finished with the cut and began to put the first aid box neatly back together again. About some things Boker was scrupulously neat.
"Primitive people," Kettrick was muttering. "People with no science, with a lot of superstition, and no knowledge of anything in the whole wide universe outside their own villages. It would be easy to use them, easy to frighten them and make them feel important at the same time. They're all human, they're all greedy little thieves, every one of them with something in his mind he'd like to have without really going to any trouble to get it. Seri promises to give them what they want, threatens to destroy them if they don't help and promises them safety if they do…'The Doomstar will never shine for us,' Nillaine said…and all they have to do is keep a small thing safe for him until he wants it."
"Pride," said Glevan. "That is the great sin. They feel that they are godlike with the power to destroy."
"Very likely," said Hurth sourly. "I take more pleasure in creating, and better for them if they did too, but that's all by the way. The thing is now, what are we going to do about it?"
A silence fell, accentuated by the drone-whine-clack of the ship. They looked at each other, their eyes oddly glistening in the sickly light.
"I mean," said Hurth, "like you said, Johnny, he's going somewhere with that thing, and there could be only one reason. They're going to use…"
"Whoever they are,"
said Boker.
"Well, we know one of them, Seri Otku, and he's going to use it. So what do we do? Mix in or stay out? Me, I'm scared. Who knows, we could come out of jump by Thwayn and find it's already poisoned."
"You could go anywhere and find that," said Boker. He paced up and down the cramped floor, runnels of sweat creeping down his chest and back. "Maybe we ought to go back to Tananaru. What do you think, Johnny? We could tell somebody there about it and let them do the worrying."
Kettrick had been wrestling with the same problem. It was not possible just to send a message from where they were to, say, Sekma. There was no communication at all in jump, and out of jump it took too long, even at the speed of light. By the time the message got there it would be out of date by several years. Communication between the Cluster systems was carried on by fast ships which moved in a constant stream between the worlds that had use for them. A world like Gurra or Thwayn, on the other hand, which had few or no messages to send, depended on traders to carry what mail they had. There had not been any other traders at Gurra; they had radiochecked with the still primitive but growing spaceport in the western hemisphere, because Kettrick had had some idea of trying to get a message back.
So it might be better to return to Tananaru, find Sekma or someone else in authority…
Then he shook his head. "It would take too long. There wouldn't be any chance then of stopping Seri. Even with fast I–C ships, he'd have had too big a start, and anyway we don't know where he's going, for sure. I think we've got to try and keep track…"
"Thwayn, Kirnanoc, Trace. It could be any of those systems," Boker said, and shuddered. "God. All those planets."
"It wouldn't have to be any of them," Kettrick said. "We only know where he said he was going when he posted his i-t."
Hurth said, "But he has to follow it! Or the I–C will damn well want to know why."
"The I–C?" said Kettrick. " 'After it's over,' there won't be any I–C."
"That's right," muttered Hurth, more shaken than he had been at the thought of any other change. And Glevan observed that they were armed with a mighty power.
"We have one advantage, maybe," Kettrick said. "Seri doesn't know we're following him…assuming that we are, of course. He doesn't even know I'm alive. And no wonder he didn't want me meddling around! If the I–C had caught on to me and started investigating him…" Kettrick groaned. "Oh, lord, if they only had! Well…"
Boker had stopped his pacing. They were all looking at him curiously. Suddenly he began to laugh.
"Sekma," he said. "What a bargain he made! Straight as an arrow to the mark I fly, without even trying, and he doesn't know it, and I can't tell him."
Boker said politely, "Sekma, Johnny? I think I lost you somewhere."
"No you didn't. It's just a side issue, that didn't seem important until now."
He told them about Sekma, being now sure that they had nothing to do with the Doomstar. As though he had ever believed they might have, but who would have thought it of Whellan or Nillaine?
They listened. When he was all through, Boker said, "Sekma knew you were back in the Cluster, he sent you back himself, and you still intended to go to the White Sun?"
"I did? That's one reason why I wasn't too unhappy about dropping out of sight there, after the explosion. I didn't report to Sekma. He doesn't know I'm alive either."
It was Kettrick's turn now to pace. He could feel them watching him, feel the temperature rising.
"You've got a right to be sore," he said. "And I am in a mood to heap dust on my own head. I didn't believe in the Doomstar. I thought I could use Sekma while he was using me, get back to the Cluster, get my license reinstated, and pick off that million credits at the White Sun, all at the same time. And I could have done it. I could still do it. Except…"
He turned to face them. "Except the damned thing's real. And I'm scared, and I'd just as soon run back to Tananaru and take the first ship out of there for Earth. Only trouble with that is, I can't."
"Why not, Johnny?" asked Boker.
"Two reasons. Seri and the White Sun. In that order. I can't make you go on with me, I can't even ask you to. But I'll make a deal with you to take me on to Kirnanoc. I can get another ship there…"
"Seri," repeated Boker. "And the White Sun?"
"Why not?"
"But Seri first."
"Naturally. If I don't stop him it'll be because I'm dead, in which case I won't have any use for a million credits." Kettrick found suddenly that he was shouting in a most melodramatic and undignified fashion. "He made a jackass out of me! A complete jackass. He murdered Khitu. He tried to murder me and Chai. Now he's on his way to murder a solar system, using my friends to help him, using my name to ruin, poison…" He was running out of breath. "Anyway, after I'm through with Seri, I might as well go out and see the Krinn. Why not?"
"You're an optimist, Johnny," Boker said. "Or maybe just a jackass. You talk about stopping Seri, as though that's an end to it. That's like saying you'll just take one little step out the airlock door. Seri's only a piece of it. You don't know how big the whole thing is, how many people, how much force. You think you can handle all that? You think we can handle all that?"
Kettrick did not answer. It was Hurth who said, very unhappily, "It looks like we're stuck to try."
Boker looked at him. Then he looked at Glevan.
"It will be a worthy battle," Glevan said, and grinned, a grimace of frightening solemnity. "We'll lose, of course. But proudly. That's the thing."
"Sure," said Boker, and shook a drop of sweat off the end of his broad nose. "Sure, that's the thing. Well, and so. How do you see this, Johnny? How will it go?"
Kettrick swore. "I don't know any more than you do. All I know is that Seri has a piece of the thing and is taking it somewhere. Maybe he'll pick up more pieces along the way. Maybe if we could just catch up with Seri we could stop the whole thing by taking, or destroying, the pieces he has, assuming that each piece is vital to the operation of the whole." He started to pace again, restless with thinking, and Chai watched him from the corner where she sprawled and panted, her large eyes dark and troubled. "If we could catch up with him…Starbird's faster than Grellah, but miracles do happen…"
"Aye," said Glevan, "to some. Not to old, rusty, battered ships. They do not turn into space hawks."
He rose and left the bridgeroom.
"At Kirnanoc," said Kettrick, "there's an I–C office. We could get help there. We certainly could get help there."
Boker brightened. So did Hurth. "Yes." they said. "Of course."
"Well, then," said Kettrick. He sat down. Then he sprang up again. "What the devil's going on?"
The whine-drone-clack had changed pitch slightly. An unpleasant small quiver ran through the fabric of the ship. Boker sprang to his feet and roared into the intercom.
"Glevan! If you blow that unit, I'll hunt you down through all the halls of hell…!"
Glevan's voice came back muffled and booming. "I'm only trying to make a very little miracle, Boker. Don't you worry." He gave a triumphant cackle. "We're important men now. We can't afford to die."
Boker turned without a word and opened up a locker underneath the seat. In a padded honeycomb inside the locker were plastic cylinders. He took one out, uncapped it, drank from it, and passed it on.
They killed the thing between them and then gave up. They should have been drunk. Never, Kettrick thought, had men more needed to be drunk. They were still as sober as Chai.
The Doomstar was not that easily escaped, even in the mind.
And Larith. Was she part of that monstrousness?
He tried not to think of her. He did not have too much success.
Glevan achieved his little miracle, a very small one indeed. They came out of jump with their hearts in their throats and every eye on the radiation counters. They showed a normal reading. Thwayn's sun, older and redder and more tired than most of the Cluster stars, rolled heavily along as it always had, shaking its
mane of fire with a sort of sad, diminished glory.
Grellah lumbered in toward the third world, a frosty planet all aglitter with the whiteness of snow.
12
Long before they landed it was obvious that Starbird was not there. There was now only one field on that whole planet, and the scanners pictured it windswept and empty. As Grellah settled down on her ragged tailfires, Kettrick thought he saw through the whipped clouds of dust and smoke the fresh scar of a similar landing. That was all.
They opened the airlock. Kettrick and Boker went outside and waited. Hurth and Glevan were already at work in Grellah's bowels. Once again Chai stretched her legs like a hound let free of the kennel. The wind was cold and clean, blowing off the southern snowfields.
Here in this vast equatorial basin it was still warm enough to support life. Herds could graze and crops could grow in the summertime, and the winters were not unbearable. There was game, and water, and the deepest river hardly ever froze. Kettrick walked about, looking at the white snowbanks left from the coming winter's first fall. He crushed a handful of it and tasted it, and felt a pang of recognition. Here and on Earth, it was the same.
He passed by the burned scat he thought he had seen in the scanner. It was there, the edges clear and fresh.
He went back to the ship. Boker was bundled up in heavy coveralls, not much liking the chill. The Cluster worlds tended to be mild. Even Chai was shivering a little in spite of her thick fur.
"If it was Starbird" Kettrick said, "we're close on her heels."
Boker nodded toward the low range of hills that screened the west. "Here comes our welcoming committee."
A line of riders mounted on shaggy, thick-legged beasts came at a shuffling trot out of the hills.
Boker drew a long breath and straightened his shoulders. "It's easy," he said. "Just act as though you never heard of the Doomstar."
"Don't work so hard at it," Kettrick muttered. "You couldn't look any guiltier."
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