by Andre Norton
I walked toward the table, coming up against the barrier again before I reached it—a circumstance which gave me a chance to assert myself as I was sure Hywel Jern would have done.
"You cannot expect an appraisal, Gentle Homo, if I cannot inspect closely."
He tapped a stud on the chair arm and I could advance, but I noted that he tapped it again, twice, when I reached the table, and I did not doubt I was now sealed in.
I picked up the woven cord and ran it through my fingers. In the past I had seen many Forerunner artifacts, some in my father's collection, some through the aid of Vondar Ustle. Many others I had studied via tri-dee representation. But this stolen treasure was the richest it had ever been my good fortune to inspect. That the pieces were Forerunner would of course have been apparent even if I had not known their recent past history. But as everyone knew, there were several Forerunner civilizations and this workmanship was new to me. Perhaps the Zacathan expedition had stumbled upon the remains of yet another of those forgotten stellar empires.
"It is Forerunner. But, I believe, a new type," I told the Veep, who still licked at his confection and watched me with an unwavering stare. "As such it is worth much more than its intrinsic value. In fact, I cannot set a price on it. You could offer it to the Vydyke Commission, but you might even go beyond what they could afford—"
"The gems, the metal, if broken up?"
At that moment his question was enough to spark revulsion and then anger in me. To talk of destroying these for the worth of their metal and gems alone was a kind of blasphemy which sickened anyone who knew what they were.
But he had asked me a direct question and I dared not display my reaction. I picked up each piece in turn, longing to linger in my examination of the bowl map, yet not daring to, lest I arouse his suspicion.
"None of the jewels is large," I reported. "Their cutting is not of the modern fashion, which reduces their value, for you would lose even more by attempting to recut. The metal—no. It is the workmanship and history which makes them treasure."
"As I thought." The Veep gave a last lick to his plate and put It aside empty. "Yet a market for such is difficult to find."
"There are collectors, Gentle Homo, who are perhaps not as free-handed as the Vydyke, but who would raise much on all their available resources to have a single piece of what lies here. They would know it for a black deal and so keep what they obtained hidden. Such men are known to the Guild."
He did not answer me at once, but continued to stare, as if he were reading my mind more than concentrating on my words. But I was familiar enough with mind-touch to know he was not trying that. I judged rather that he was considering carefully what I had just said.
But I was now aware of something else which first alarmed and then excited me. There was warmth at my middle, spreading from the pocket which held the zero stone. And that could only mean, since I was not putting it to service, that somewhere near was another of those mysterious gems. I looked to the most obvious setting, that of the crown, but I saw no telltale glow there. Then Eet's thought reached me.
"The bowl!"
I put out my hand, as if to reinspect that piece. And I saw that on the surface nearest me, luckily turned away from the Veep, there was a bright spark of light. One of those seemingly random jewels I had thought were meant to mark stars had come to life!
Picking up the bowl, I turned it idly around, holding my palm to cover the zero stone, and felt both at my middle and from the bowl the heat of life.
"Which do you think of greatest importance?" the Veep asked.
I put down the bowl, the live gem again turned away from him, looking over the whole array as if to make up my mind.
"This perhaps." I touched the strange weapon.
"Why?"
Again I sensed a test, but this time I had failed.
"He knows!" Eet's warning came even as the Veep's hand moved toward the buttons on the chair arm.
I threw the weapon I held. And by some superlative fortune I did not have any right to expect, it crashed against his forehead just beneath that dangling koro stone, as if the force field no longer protected him, or else I was inside it. He did not even cry out, but his eyes closed and he slumped deeper into the hold of the easirest. I whirled to face the door, sure he had alerted his guards. The force field might protect me, but it would also hold me prisoner.
I saw the door open, the guards there. One of them cried out and fired a laser beam. The force field held, deflected that ray enough to send a wave of flame back, and the man farthest into the room staggered, dropped his weapon, and fell against the one behind him.
"There is a way." Eet was by the easirest. He reached up and grabbed at the strange weapon now lying in the Veep's lap. I swept up the other treasures, holding them between my body and arm as I followed Eet to the wall, where he fingered a stud and so opened a hidden door. As that fell into place behind us, he mind-touched again.
"That will not hold them for long, and there are alarms and safeguards all through this wall way. I scouted them out when I explored. They need only throw those into action and we are trapped."
I leaned against the wall, unsealing my tunic and making its front into a bag to hold what I had snatched up. It was so awkward a bundle that I had difficulty in closing the tough fabric over it.
"Did your exploring see a way out?" I asked now. Our escape from that room had been largely a matter of unthinking reflex action. Now I was not sure we had not trapped ourselves.
"These are old repair ways. There are suits in a locker. They still have to patch and repatch the outside. It depends now upon how fast we can reach the suit locker."
The gravity here was practically nonexistent, and we made our way through the dark, which was near absolute, by swimming through the air. Luckily there were handholds at intervals along the outer wall, proving that this method of progression had been used here before. But my mind worried at what lay ahead. Supposing fortune did favor us enough to let us reach the suits, get into them, and out on the outer shell of the station. We still had a long strip of space to cross to the ring of wreckage, and then to find our LB. This time the odds were clearly too high against us. I believed that the whole of Waystar would be alerted to track us down, they to hunt over familiar ground, we lost in their territory.
"Wait—" Eet's warning brought me up with a bump against him. "Trap ahead."
"What do we do—?"
"You do nothing, except not distract me!" he snapped.
I half expected him to make some move forward, for I thought his intention was to disarm what waited us. But he did not. Though no mind-touch was aimed at me, I felt what could only be waves of mental energy striking some distance ahead—and the zero stone in my belt grew uncomfortably warm against my body.
"Well enough," Eet reported. "The energy is now burned out. We have a clear path for a space."
We encountered two more of what Eet declared to be pitfalls, but which I never saw, before we came out of a sliding panel in the wall into a blister compartment on the outer skin of the hull. There we found the suits, just as Eet had foretold. Since I could not stuff myself plus the loot I carried into the one nearest my size, I had to pass the bowl and the tiara on to Eet, who was in the smallest, still much too large for him.
But how we would reach the outer shell of wreckage and the LB, I had not the least idea. The suits were both equipped, it was true, with blast beams, intended to give any worker who was jolted off into open space a chance of returning to the surface of the station. But if we used those, their power might not be enough to take us all the way to the wreckage, and in addition, we would be in plain sight of any watcher or radar screen. However, we did have the treasure and—
"That mistake I made—does the Veep know the importance of the bowl?" I demanded now.
"Part of it. He knows it is a map."
"Which they would not destroy willingly." I hoped that was true.
"You argue from hope, not knowledge,
" the mutant returned. "But it is all the hope we may have."
I signaled exit from the bubble, and crawled out, the magnetic plates on my boots anchoring me to the surface of the station. Once before Eet and I had so gone into space and I was touched now with the terrible fear which had gripped me then when I had lost my footing on the skin of the Free Trader ship and my contact with security, and floated into empty space.
But here there was a limit to emptiness. The cargo ship which we had followed into this port was gone, but the needle-nosed raider and the yacht were still in orbit, and above, all around, was the mass of wreckage— though I could sight no landmarks there and wondered how we were ever going to discover the narrow inlet in the jagged, tangled mass which hid the LB.
I could see no reason to wait. Either we would coast across to the wreckage or our power would fail. But to wait here any longer was to risk being captured before we had even tried. However, we did take the precaution of linking together by one of the hooked lines meant to anchor a worker to the surface of the station. So united, we took off between the two ships hanging ominously above.
"I cannot reach the controls of my jet—" Eet delivered what might be a final blow, dooming us to capture. Would the power in my own shoulder-borne rocket be enough to take us both over?
I triggered the controls, felt the push thrust which sent me and the suit containing Eet away from the station. My aim was the nearest of wreckage. I might be able to work my way along that in search of the passage if I could get to it. But every moment I expected to be caught by tangle beams, somehow sure that the Veep would not risk an annihilating weapon which would destroy his treasure.
The spurt of thrust behind me continued, in spite of the drag Eet caused as he spun slowly about at the end of the line, and there did not come any pursuit or pressure beam. I did not feel any triumph, only a foreboding which wore on my nerves. It is always worse to wait for an attack. I was certain that we had been sighted and that any moment we would be caught in a net.
The thrust failed while we were still well away from the wreckage. And though I got one more small burst by frantic fingering of the controls, it did little more than set me spinning across a small portion of that gap. Eet had been carried ahead of me by some chance of my own efforts, and now I saw his suit roll from side to side, as if, within it, he fought to reach his controls and so activate his own power.
What he did I could not tell, but suddenly there was a lunge forward of his spinning suit, and he towed me with him. The power of his progress intensified, for he no longer rolled. Now he was as straight as a dart flung at some target, and he dragged me easily behind as he headed for the wreckage. Still I could not guess why we had not been followed.
The splintered and dangerous mass of that wall of derelict ships grew more distinct. I trusted Eet could control his power, so that we would not be hurled straight into it. The merest scrape of some projection could tear suits and kill us in an instant.
Eet was rolling again, fighting against the full force of the power. Though I could do little to control my own passage, I rolled, too, hoping to meet feet first a piece of ship's side which would afford a reasonably smooth landing among the debris.
We whirled on at a faster pace than my own pack had sent us. And I guessed suddenly that Eet was making use of the zero stone on the map to trigger the energy of his rocket.
"Off!" I thought that as an order. "Well be cut to ribbons if you do not."
Whether he could not control the force now, I did not know, but my feet slammed with bone-shaking impact against the smooth bit I had aimed for. I reached out, trying to grip Eet's suit. He had managed to turn, to coast alongside of the debris, just far enough away not to be entangled in it, yet. The magnetic plates in my boots kept me anchored, but not for long. Though I stopped Eet's advance with a sharp jerk, I was immediately thereafter torn loose by the power which dragged him on.
We nudged along beside the wreckage, twisting and turning as best we could to avoid any contact. Even if we might not be picked up by sight scanners against the camouflaging irregularities of that mass of metal, any heat identification ray could pick us up. And I did not doubt in the least that such equipment was in use at Waystar.
Was it that they dared not attack for fear of losing the treasure? Had they sent ahead of us some command to activate the outer defenses, to keep us bottled up until they could collect us at their leisure? Perhaps when loss of air had rendered us perfectly harmless?
"I think they want you alive." Eet's answer came in response to my last dark speculation. "They guess that you know the value of the map. They want to know why. And perhaps they know that Hywel Jern did not really rise from the dead. I may read minds, but in that nest back there I could not sort out all thoughts."
I was not interested in the motives of the enemy. I was absorbed now in escape, if that was at all possible. Given time, we might work our way completely around the wall of debris to find the entrance. But such time our air supply would not offer.
"Ahead—the ship with the broken hatch," Eet said suddenly. "That I have seen before!"
I could make out the broken hatch. It took the shape of a half-opened mouth. And in me, too, memory stirred. I had set gloved hand to the edge of that very same hatch just before the pressure beam had made us captive. We could not be far now from the entrance, though I could hardly believe in such fortune.
Eet put on an extra burst of speed, drawing out a space from the wreckage, and certainly this energy could not all come from the suit rocket. The spurt was enough to bring us inside the ship passage. And we worked our way back from one handgrip to another, or rather I did so, pulling Eet's suit along. Only the fact that we were both relatively weightless made it possible. And even then, I was weak, shaking with fatigue, not certain I could make the full journey.
Every handhold I won to and from was a struggle. I did not direct my attention to the whole passage yet ahead, but limited it to the next hold only, and then to the next. I even lost my fear of what might lie behind my concentration was so great on just swinging to the next hold—
We gained, I was not quite sure how, the crevice in which we had left the LB and crawled to its hatch. But once I slammed the door shut behind us I lost my last ounce of energy, and slid down, unable to move, watching Eet, in the clumsy suit, lift one arm with visible effort to reach the inner controls, fail, and then with grim patience try again.
Eventually he succeeded. Air hissed in around me and the inner hatch opened. The suit holding Eet squirmed and wriggled, and then the mutant emerged, kicked the suit away in an almost vindictive gesture, and scrambled over to me to fumble with the sealings which held me in the protective covering.
The ship air revived me to the extent that I was able to shed that shell and crawl on into the cabin. Eet had preceded me, and now squatted in the pilot's web, fingering the buttons to ease us out and away.
I dragged myself to the hammock, lay weakly back in it. I did not believe at that moment that we had the least chance of breaking through the outer defenses of Waystar. We and our ship must meet some force field which would hold us, intact, as our captors wanted. But some reckless desire to go down fighting made me take the zero stone out in my shaking hands. I broke the disguise it had given me, or hoped I did. Having no mirror I could not be sure.
Now—there was something I could do which would at least confuse them if they slapped a spy ray on us.
"Such comes now," Eet reported and then closed his mind tightly, intent only on getting us out of the tunnel.
How much time did I have? The stone burned my hands but I held on. I had no mirror to mark the course of my transformation, but I willed it with all the energy and resource I had left. Then I lay back weakly, unable even to put away the precious source of my pain.
I looked blearily down what I could see of my prone body. There were, surely I could not be mistaken, the furred breeches, and above them the brilliance of a space admiral's tunic. I turned my hea
d a fraction from side to side. My arms were bare, below the elbow wearing the gemmed armlets. I was, I hoped, by the power of the zero stone, a complete copy of the Veep. If they now snooped us with a seeing ray, the change might give us a small advantage, a few moments of confusion among our enemies.
Eet did not turn to look at me but his thought rang in my head.
"Very well done. And—here comes their snoop ray!"
Not having his senses, I must take his word for that. I levered myself up in the hammock with what energy I could summon, which was only enough to keep me braced with some small semblance of alertness. Eet suddenly slapped a furred fist on the board and the answering leap of the LB pinned me against the hammock. My head spun, I was sick—then I was swept into darkness.
Fourteen
When I roused groggily I lay staring at the rounded expanse above me, not able at once to remember where I was, or perhaps even who I was. With what seemed painful and halting slowness, memory of the immediate past returned. At least we were still in existence; we had not been snuffed out by some defense weapon of the pirate stronghold. But were we free? Or held captive by a force beam? I tried to lever myself up and the LB hammock swayed.
But I had had a look at my own body and I was not now wearing the semblance of the Veep—though a furry dwarf still hunched at the controls of the small craft. My hand went to the bulge in my belt. The sooner I was sure I was myself again, the better. I had a strange feeling that I could not think or plan until I was Murdoc Jern outwardly as well as inwardly, as if the outer disguise could change me from myself into a weak copy of the man my father had been. Eet had been a cat, but I had willed that on him without his desire. This I had taken upon myself by my own wish, meant to be outer, not complete. What did make sense any more?
"You are yourself," came Eet's thought.
