Postmarked the Stars sq-4

by Andre Norton

  He was going down the ramp, a little worried and resentful of this last-minute call to pick up a security package. Luckily there was a field scooter parked not too far away. He scrambled in, fed in his ident disk, and gave it the order for the gate.

  “The Deneb.” He repeated aloud his destination, having a vague idea it was an eating place not too far from the field. At least that much was in his favor. And he had the receipt tape to hand, needing only the voice and thumb record of the shipper to make it legal.

  The scooter delivered him at the gate, and he looked down the offport street for some sign of the cafe he wanted. Xecho was a crosslane planet, a port of call for ships switching from one sector to another. Thus it did have an off-port section of inns, eating places, and amusement holes for space crews, but it was relatively small and tame compared to such sections ringing the ports of other worlds, consisting of a single street of closely packed one-story buildings.

  As usual, the heat of late afternoon was intense. Dane was wearing full uniform tunic and breeches, which added to his discomfort. He must make this excursion as short as possible. He searched for any identifying sign of the establishment he wanted. Those bright lights that would be visible at night were missing now, and it took him several moments of survey to find it—a small place sandwiched in between a hock-lock and an inn he remembered having eaten in the day before.

  There were not many on the street—the heat kept most planetside dwellers inside. He passed only two crewmen as he made the best speed the sultry day heat would allow to his goal, and he did not look closely at either.

  To step inside the Deneb was to step from a furnace into cool dusk and relief against the punishment of Xecho’s day. It was not a restaurant, rather a drinking place, and he was uneasy. For someone with a package needing security insurance, to be waiting here was not normal—but then this was his first mail run, and how could he gauge what was normal procedure. If he got voice and thumb records, then the Queen was only responsible for the safe transportation of the article in question, and if he had continued doubts, he need only step into the security office at the port on his way back and make an additional recording for the complete coverage of the Queen’s part in an affair that might be on the shady side.

  There was a line of booths against the far wall with dials for drinks and various legal smokes. But knowing off-ports, Dane wondered if some illegal stimulants could not also be ordered if one knew the proper code. The place was very quiet. A crewman was in a drunken doze in the farthest booth, an empty glass before him, his fingers still curled protectingly about it.

  There was no sign of any proprietor, and the small booth beside the door was empty. Dane waited impatiently for a moment or two. Surely the drunk in the corner had not sent for him. At last he rapped on the surface of the pay-booth grill, the noise carrying more loudly through the room than he expected.

  “Softly, softly—”

  The words were Basic but delivered with a hissing intonation that slurred them into what was just a series of “s” sounds. The curtain at the back of the booth had been pulled aside, and a woman came in—that is, she was almost humanoid enough to be termed that, though her pallid skin was covered with minute scales, and the growth that hung about her shoulders was not strictly hair, fine-fringed though it was. Her features were enough like his own not to be remarkable. She was wearing an affectation of Terran sophistication that he had last seen on that planet, narrow trousers of metallic cloth, a sleeveless jerkin of puff fur, and a half mask of silver-copper that covered eyes and forehead and hung part way over the nose in whorls of metal.

  The dress, high-style Terran, was as out of place in this dingy hole as a drink of Lithean champagne would be, although it served as a disguise.

  “You wish—?” Again that hissing speech.

  “A call was made to the mail ship, Gentle Fem, the Solar Queen, asking that a security package be picked up for shipment.”

  “Your ident, Gentle Homo?”

  Dane held it out, and she bent her head a little as if the elaborate mask made it as hard for her to see as it was for others to view her face.

  “Ah. Yes, there is such a package.”

  “You are the sender?”

  “Please to come this way.” She evaded his question, opened the front of the booth as if it were a door, and beckoned Dane beyond, looping the curtain for him to pass through.

  There was a very narrow corridor, so narrow a vent that his shoulders brushed the wall on either side. Then a second door, one set in the wall, rolled aside as he approached it, probably set on an entra beam.

  The room into which he went was in contrast to the dinginess of the Deneb’s open serving section. It was paneled in plasta sheets, which melted into one another in a never-ending view of wide sweeps of alien landscapes. In spite of the beauty of the walls, however, there was an assault on Dane’s nostrils that almost made him gag. He could see no source of that terrible stench—it just was, though the furnishings of the room were luxurious and its general aspect one of taste with plenty of credits to gratify it.

  A man sprawled in an easi-rest. He did not rise as Dane came in nor greet him with more than a stare. The woman paid no attention to him but swiftly went past Dane to the other side of the room and picked up a box of dull metal, a square cube as large as two palms’ width.

  “This you take,” she said.

  “Who signs?” Dane looked from her to the man, who still stared at him so steadily that the Terran felt uncomfortable.

  The man said nothing at all, though there was a small period of silence as if the woman waited for some order or move from him. Then she spoke.

  “If it is needful, then so will I do.”

  “It is necessary.” Dane brought out his recorder and leveled the lens at the box.

  “What you do?” the woman cried out with urgency as if he proposed to shoot the package out of her hand.

  “Take an official recording,” he told her. She had the box pressed tightly between both hands, the fingers outstretched so that she appeared to be trying to cover as much of its surface with her own flesh and bone as she could.

  “You ship that,” Dane continued, “and you must go by the rules.”

  Again it was as if she waited for some sign from the man, but he had not moved, nor did his eyes drop from their survey of Dane. Finally, with visible reluctance, she put the box on the edge of a small table and stepped back, though she hovered close by, her hands even outstretched, as if ready to snatch it to safety if threatened.

  Dane pressed the button, took a picture of the shipment, then held out the mike of the voice tape.

  “Verify that you are shipping this by security, Gentle Fern. Give your name, the date, and then press your thumb on the tape roll—right here.”

  “Very well. If this is the regulation, then I must do.” But she picked up the box and held it against her as she leaned forward to take the mike.

  Only she did not complete that gesture. Instead, the hand reaching for the mike slashed down at Dane’s wrist, and a nail, abnormally long, scored his flesh. For a moment he was too stunned to move. Then his hand and his arm went numb. As it dropped to hang uselessly at his side, the tape fell on the floor. He had strength enough to turn to the door, but he did not get even one step toward safety. His last clear memory was of falling forward to his knees, his head turned a little so that the unwinking stare of the man in the easi-rest was still on him. The other did not move.

  There was nothing more until he crawled over a steamy landscape over greasy mud and awakened again sick in the inn room to make his way back to the Queen.

  Then he awoke, to face the party crowding into sick bay, Tau bending over him with a restorative prick of needle, bringing him fully aware of where he was, but this time able to remember all the probe had brought to the surface of his mind.

  3.CARGO TROUBLE

  “The tape record.” Dane spoke his first thought aloud.

  “The only one o
f your possessions that stranger did not bring with him,” Jellico replied.

  “And the box?”

  “Not here. It might only have been bait.”

  Somehow Dane did not believe that. The woman’s actions, as he remembered them, argued otherwise. Or had they been meant to center his attention wholly on the shipment so he would be unprepared for her attack?

  He knew that those crowded into the small sick bay had heard every detail of what he had relived. The probe not only broadcast but also taped it for the record while he was under, so all the few facts were plain.

  “How did I get from the Deneb to the inn?” he wondered. There was something else, a small teasing memory of a face so fleetingly seen that he could not be sure. Had or had he not sighted in the outer room of the inn as he staggered out the man who had sat so silently when he had been struck down? He could not be sure.

  “They could have carried you in as a drunk,” Ali remarked. “Would be common enough in off-port. And I take it you did not stop to make inquiries when you left.”

  “Had to get back to the ship,” Dane returned. He was thinking of the box that had seemed so important to the woman. It had not been large, small enough, in fact, to hide. But they had searched the treasure room, his cabin—

  “The box—”

  Captain Jellico stood up. “About so big, wasn’t it?” He sketched dimensions in the air.

  Dane agreed.

  “All right. We’ll hunt it.”

  Though he longed to join in that search, Dane was now tied to the bunk by his own weakness. The secondary shot Tau had given him was wearing off. He was suddenly so sleepy that he could not fight the drowsiness. But he knew that any search the captain organized would be down to the very plates that made up the Queen.

  And the search, thorough though it was, revealed nothing, as Dane discovered when he roused, feeling much more himself than he had since leaving the Deneb. They had a dead man in deep freeze and nothing else, save the probe tape, which Captain Jellico played over again until Dane loathed hearing it, always hoping for some small new detail. There was only one thing to add to that account, the chance that the man in the inn who had witnessed his leaving had been also in the Deneb.

  “If that was true, he must have had a shock,” the captain mused. “But it was too late for him to change their plans then. And we can’t do any more until we get to the local Patrol post on Trewsworld. I’ll take word- oath that there is no box hidden where we looked.”

  “That woman,” the com-tech, Tang Ya, said between sips of Terran coffee in the mess cabin where Dane had gone on his first excursion out of sick bay, “she was alien. I’ve been wondering—” From the inner pocket of his tunic, he pulled a sketch block. In sharp, set lines on it a figure was boldly presented. He put it before Dane. “Look like her?”

  Dane was startled. As with all the crew, Tang Ya had his hobby to relieve the tedium of long voyages. But to Dane’s knowledge, it was the creation of miniature electronic devices, toys. He had not known the Martian com-tech was also an artist, or enough of one to produce the picture he now saw.

  He studied it critically, not for the skill of the work but for likeness to face and figure of his memory.

  “The face—it was narrower at the chin; the eyes—they seemed to slant more, unless the mask made them just seem so.”

  Ya took up the block, pressed a small indentation on its rim, and the lines Dane thought set altered into the shape he had suggested.

  “Yes!” But he was still amazed at the alteration.

  The com-tech again laid the block on the table, sliding it along to Captain Jellico, who studied it for a long moment before he in turn passed it to Tau, and from the medic it went to Steen Wilcox. The astrogator picked it up and held it closer to the light.

  “Sitllith—”

  The word meant nothing to Dane but apparently did to the Captain, for he almost snatched the plaque back from his second-in-command to give it a second intent examination.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sitllith!” Wilcox was certain. “But it doesn’t fit.”

  “No,” Jellico agreed angrily.

  “Just what is Sitllith—or who?” Tau asked.

  “What and who both,” replied Wilcox. “Alien-humanoid, but really alien to the tenth—”

  Dane started, leaning forward to view the picture where it lay before the captain. Alien to the tenth! Xenobiology was a required study for cargo masters, as it was on them that first contact for trade with alien races often rested. Their study of alien customs, desires, and personality factors never ended, but he had never believed that so humanoid a form could contain so alien a personality as Wilcox had stated. It was rather like saying that a Terran snake’s identity went about clad in flesh and bones such as his own.

  “But she—she talked rationally. She—she was very humanoid—” he protested.

  “She also poisoned you,” the astrogator replied dryly. “Not with any concoction smeared on her nail either. That was from a gland in her finger! As to how she could appear so close to the human norm, I don’t know that. Conditioning might have something to do with it. But a Sitllith on Xecho! They are thought to be planet-bound, to have so great a fear of the open that any attempt to rise from the surface of their world brings about self-death—they frighten themselves to death. Their world is infrared light, so we don’t visit them much. I saw just one, in deep freeze back at a lab on Barbarrossa. And it was immature. Its poison sack was empty. It had gone after a Survey scout and stowed away in his ship when he lifted. When it found it was in space”—Wilcox shrugged—“that was the end. He brought it back in deep freeze. But you had an adult, operating off her own world, and I would have sworn that was impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible,” Tau said. He was right, as all spacemen knew. What would be wildly impossible, improbable, not to be believed on one world, might prove commonplace on another planet. Wild nightmares on Terra were upright and worthy citizens (if not by Terran standards) on alien soil. Customs so bizarre as to be unbelievable became ritual by law elsewhere. So, long ago spacemen, and even more Free Traders, who hunted the lesser known and newly opened planets, had come to believe anything, no matter how incredible it might seem to the planet-bound.

  Jellico picked up the sketch again. “This can be fixed to stay?” he asked the astrogator.

  “Press in the middle—then the impression will be locked until you wish to release it.”

  “We have a dead man, a mask”—Wilcox set down his empty mug—“an alien supposed to be planet-bound but appearing parsecs from its or her native world, a box that has vanished, and a cargo master back from the dead—and no solution so far. Unless we can find a hint or two before we planet—”

  “We have something else.” Frank Mura stood in the doorway. Though he spoke in his usual quiet tone, there was something in his voice that drew their attention. “We have two missing brachs.”

  “What in the—!” Jellico was on his feet. Because his main interest was that of a xenobiologist, he had spent time observing the animals from Xecho, even taking them to his cabin on occasion for freedom from their cage. Since Queex, the hideous hoobat whose cage hung there, objected so strenuously to their coming that Jellico’s usual method of quieting the parrot-crab-toad, that of a smart blow on the floor of its cage to jar it into silence had not sufficed, he had had to transfer Queex elsewhere for the duration of the brachs’ visit.

  “But the cage lock,” he added to his first protest.

  Mura extended a hand. Between his fingers was a thin wire, twisted at one end. “This was in that,” he stated.

  “By the Seven Names of Trutex!” Ali took the bit of wire and held it up, twirling it between thumb and finger. “A pick-lock!”

  “It was pulled,” Mura continued, “from the netting—inside the cage.”

  He certainly had all their attention now. Twisted from inside the cage? But that must mean—Dane’s earlier complacent acceptance
of the impossible when it dealt with Sitlliths balked at accepting this particular revelation. Inside the cage meant that the brachs had twisted it free. But the brachs were animals, and not particularly bright animals at that. If he remembered rightly, and he should, for that rating was part of the invoices, they did not rank as high on the learning scale as Sinbad, who was now sitting in the far corner of the mess cabin industriously washing his face.

  “Let me see that!” Jellico took the wire and studied it with the same concentration he had given to the picture “Broken off—and, yes, it is a pick-lock.”

  “The brachs,” Mura repeated, “are missing.”

  They could not be in the holds, Dane thought. Those were sealed. That left the engine room, the sick bay, their personal cabins, the control section, and a few other places, none of which could afford much protection for two escaped animals, while the intense search earlier for the box had certainly acquainted the crew with every possible space.

  Now they had another hunt. Two animals, perhaps frightened, and with the female pregnant, so that she should not be alarmed, must be handled with more caution. Jellico set up a search party consisting only of those who had had contact with the brachs, since strangers might only send them into some desperate and damaging flight. He called instructions to Stotz in the engine room and ordered the engineer, the two tube men, Kosti and Weeks, together with Ali, who was to return there forthwith, to stay put until their section of the ship was declared empty of brachs.

  Wilcox and Ya were to join Shannon on watch duty at the controls, search that section, and seal themselves in and any wandering brach out, leaving the actual search to Dane, Tau, Mura, and the captain, who had petted, fed, and cared for the live cargo. As an added precaution, Sinbad was shut up in the galley.

  When the engine room and the control cabin both reported crew in, brachs not present, the other four began. Dane made his way down to the cargo level, but the seals there were intact. There was no way they could have gotten into the holds. The thought of the pick-lock still bothered him. How had the brachs done that? Or had they? Was it only meant to seem that they had freed themselves? But no member of the crew would play such a senseless prank. And the stranger was dead, in a freeze compartment. Dane’s imagination suggested a very macabre explanation, and he found himself turning almost against his will to a side passage, to another compartment door. That, too, was sealed, and he knew with relief that that wild speculation was truly impossible. The dead did not come to life and walk again.