John Maddox Roberts - Space Angel

by John Maddox Roberts

  "Well," Torwald said, "I'll mention it to the skipper, but—" without breaking the cadence of his speech, he drew his laser as Gold Studs' fingers darted beneath his vest. The beam slashed into the thug's side. Simultaneously, Kelly spun and drew his pistol, firing at the nearer of the two men now closing in from be-

  hind He fired again as Torwald's laser burned into the arm of the man on Gold Studs' right. Kelly's sei oiul shot, panicky and a little off center, struck his second man in the shoulder, spun him around, and sent him staggering into the dark. The man on Gold studs' left turned and ran, quickly followed by the man with the rayed arm. From Torwald's last word to the fleeing of the unwounded man, less than four seconds had elapsed.

  The sound of the shots and the flash of the laser drew some curious glances through the doors of nearby bars, but they were quickly withdrawn. Torwald and Kelly walked casually away, as if nothing out of i he ordinary had happened. From behind them could be heard the sounds of men disputing possession of Ciold Studs' pistol.

  "Did you know those men?" Kelly Was trying unsuccessfully to keep his voice steady.

  "Never saw them before. Those were hired men. Hired cheap, too, I imagine. That kind will kill you for a good pair of boots." His voice changed slightly. "You did well, Kelly. I shouldn't have let you get into this, but I won't forget it." Kelly could say nothing.

  When they returned to the ship, it was brilliantly lighted, lamps directing beams from all directions as work crews installed the new weaponry.

  "Sturges wastes no time, I see," Torwald commented.

  From her vantage point on the ramp, the skipper caught sight of their faces as they boarded.

  "What's wrong with him?" she asked Torwald, after Kelly boarded. Torwald gave her a brief account of the confrontation, then continued on to the mess, where most of the crew was already gathered and Michelle was administering the age-old nerve tonic from a bottle. Michelle glared at Torwald as he entered. He held out his hands, palms forward, to forestall what he assumed would be her blistering comments.

  "My fault," he said. "I shouldn't have taken him there. But, I never thought I'd still have enemies in this place."

  "Damn right it's your fault," the skipper said. "If he'd been hurt, I'd have kicked you off this ship so hard you would've gone into hyper!"

  "I'm all right!" Kelly yelled, nettled at their solicitude. "Don't make such a big deal about it. We were attacked and we fought and that's all there is to it."

  "Sure," said Ham, "the kid's learning like the rest of us. No harm done, just the removal of a couple of punks that this place can probably spare, and a couple of others put out of action for a while."

  "That's all there was to it," said Kelly. "Don't give Torwald a hard time just because of me."

  "Then, what is bothering you?" Nancy asked quietly.

  "Well . . . it's just that, I can't help thinking. A couple more years without finding a ship, and I could've been one of those scum back there. There were plenty like that back in Earthport. Sooner or later, I'd have had to join a gang like that if I wanted to survive. And I'd have probably ended up gunned down in an alleyway, too. So let's just be glad the right side won and leave it at that, okay?" he stared at the skipper.

  "Sure, Kelly," she said, after a few moments' hesitation. "Now, go to your cabin and keep out of sight till we leave port." Kelly got up and left.

  "Torwald, do you think your former friends will try to get to you or Kelly aboard ship?"

  "No chance, Skipper. Nobody here makes trouble within the port. It's neutral territory. Anybody tries to make difficulties inside the port perimeter, all the others will be out to get him."

  "You're lucky that's the case," she said. "All right, everybody, we up ship in three hours, as soon as I've had time to check out the newly installed equipment. Torwald, you get the coordinates for the Viver ship?"

  "Parking orbit around Donar."

  "That's the right direction, anyway. Old Sphere shouldn't kick up any fuss. Okay, everybody, get ready to button up. Next stop is—what's the name of the ship, Torwald?"

  "Viver clan ship K'Tchak."

  Four

  It was Kelly's watch on the bridge, and as usual, he was studying. It seemed he was always studying these days. At least, he was studying when he wasn't being worked to exhaustion. It had never occurred to him that spacing would be so much like going to school. But then, he had never before realized the depth of his ignorance. The State schools had been little more than an excuse to keep the younger War orphans and refugees off the streets for a while.

  Lost time was being made up for now. Whenever he could be spared from work, he would study chemistry or navigation with Finn, supply and paperwork with Torwald, engineering with Achmed, and Bert seemed able to teach just about anything. Nancy was teaching him communications, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't inveigle her into any other line of conversation.

  Just now, he was reading up on Vivers. Kelly could find little in the ship's library on the strange creatures.

  He asked Torwald, and the older spacer gave him a microfilm monograph, written by none other than one Torw ald Raff en, that contained more accurate information than any "official" document about the secretive subspecies.

  Kelly learned that in the last century, a few decades after the first interstellar drive was perfected, a group of geneticists got together and decided, after the fashion of scientists, that the human race could stand some improvement. They were going to create the future Man. It was decided that humans were good mainly for surviving and that the new human race would have to be even better at it in order to be equal to the unknown exigencies of new worlds. It was agreed that the upright, bipedal, digit-handed human form could scarcely be improved upon for generalized capability, but that little improvements could be added here and there, specialties without penalization, as it were. Onto this they grafted a mentality obsessively concerned with survival. The result was the Viver, though it was not quite what they had planned. The fear that Vivers generated in ordinary humans was sufficient to get genetic engineering of humans banned forever. Kelly scratched Teddy's cars and pondered that. The pseudobear had become a close friend, for it seemed to be the only life form on board that didn't give him orders, chew him out, or think up unpleasant jobs for him to perform.

  The typical Viver, Kelly read, was between six and seven feet tall and covered with horny, articulated plates of chitin that roughly followed the lines of human musculature. The hands were human in design but much larger, the knuckles covered with a spiked band of bone. The fingertips were equipped with inch-long retractile claws that did not interfere with ordinary use of the fingers when sheathed. Elbows and knees were heavily knobbed and bore large spikes. The feet had no toes, the foot being equipped with a club of bone and chitin where the toes should be. At

  the back of the leg, just below the calf, was a protrusion somewhat like a horse's fetlock that concealed a seven-inch razor-sharp spur, perhaps the deadliest of the Viver's natural weapons.

  The head, set on a long flexible neck, was the least human feature of a Viver. The eyes were huge, taking up most of the skull's interior. They were covered with a transparent plate and could swivel independently of one another. There were several, smaller apertures around the skull for the eyes to peer through. The beings had no true teeth, just serrated chitin.

  Internally, Vivers differed even more radically from the human parent stock. The brain was distributed throughout the body in tiny nodes, and the heart was likewise decentralized, being a series of small pumps distributed throughout the circulatory system. Practically the only way to kill a Viver was to cut him up into very small pieces. All parts, including brain tissue, were regenerative. It had been speculated that if a Viver were split in two down the middle, two complete Vivers would be the eventual result. So far no one had had the nerve to try that particular experiment.

  Psychologically, all else was subordinate to the survival imperative. A Viver concerned himself wi
th the survival of his race, his clan, his family, and himself. There were no political loyalties, only biological ones. They were smugglers because they had no respect whatever for ordinary human laws. They would have made invincible soldiers, but they saw war as a threat to their survival and studiously ignored conflicts between ordinary humans.

  However, there was one exception. Young Vivers, before being judged fit to reproduce, had to undergo a period of exile during which they were expected to take part in wars and other adventures of a violent sort. It was for this last reason that the Space Angel was calling upon the good ship K'Tchak.

  The Viver ship resembled a collection of buildings held together with tubes and braces, and, essentially, that was what it was. Built in space, it was never intended to land. The craft had to be big, for it contained almost all of the clan K'Tchak, and additions were made as the clan expanded. Despite their horrible tempers, Vivers liked the company of their own land and ran to large families. It was all part of their obsession with survival.

  As she approached, the Angel had about a fleet's worth of armament trained on her. This was not because of her new weaponry; lifeboats received the same treatment from a Viver clan ship. Torwald gave a few passwords over the ship-to-ship and obtained grudging permission to go aboard, alone. As a security precaution, the skipper insisted that Torwald carry a scanner giving full aural and visual communication with those aboard the Angel. The Vivers did not object to the procedure; Vivers understood all about security precautions.

  The remainder of the Space-Angel's crew gathered on the bridge to monitor the proceedings. Torwald was met at the lock by a dozen or so heavily armed Vivers who escorted him down a dreary corridor to an unmarked cubicle that contained no furnishings but a desk. Aboard a Viver ship, all was bare, functional, Spartan. Behind the desk sat a Viver whose high rank was plain from the jeweled handles of his weapons. Weapon decoration was the high point of Viver aesthetics. The official wasted no time on introductions.

  "What business have you with the glorious K'Tchak?"

  "Our mission is one of extreme danger. If you have one or two young people who are due for their adulthood ritual, it would be a good test for them."

  "You do well for yourselves to ask. Soft people like you are not well suited to strenuous tasks. Yes, we have two such. Their names are K'Stin and B'Shant.

  They are of the best families. The glory of their bodies shines even among Vivers. Among you pulpy persons, their beauty and durability shall be as diamonds among mushrooms."

  "I am sure that they are as hard to kill as a pack of ship rats," Torwald replied courteously. "Would they like to come with us?"

  "Who cares what they want?" the official snorted. "It is time for them to go, so they go. If they do not come back, they will have failed. Return to your ship now. The sight of their degenerate parent stock may corrupt our young. The two shall be sent to you shortly."

  The crew met Torwald upon his return to the Angel, eager to know what to expect.

  "The Vivers must be training diplomats," Torwald said. "I never met one before who was so suave and urbane."

  "All right," said the skipper, "let's have it. What are we in for? I've never shipped with a Viver, and I don't think anyone else here has, either."

  "First of all, folks, you'll find them a bit overbearing. The Vivers have the utmost contempt for us standard-variety humans. In fact, they're already developing a mythology in which they weren't derived from human stock at all. The idea is as repugnant to them as the theory of the animal origin of humanity was to the Victorians. Also, they react to the slightest threat with devastating violence, so don't step on their, ah, well, they don't have toes, but don't step on anything.

  "Michelle, you won't have to worry about doctoring them because they don't get sick, and anything that gets chopped off grows back. They can metabolize just about anything, so you can feed them fertilizer from Hydroponics if you like."

  "What's their language?" Nancy asked.

  "The one they use among themselves is secret, but they're accomplished linguists. Their voice boxes can

  reproduce almost any sound, and they can speak and hear well into the super- and subsonics."

  "Can we trust them?" Ham asked, lighting up a cigar.

  "As long as they don't think we're deliberately trying lo kill them. They're fantastically suspicious, so we'd better not order them to take any risks that we're not taking, too. Their test is supposed to be dangerous, or it would be meaningless. It's only during this period that any Viver will risk his existence at the orders of a non-Viver."

  "Where are you going to billet them?" the skipper asked.

  "They'll have to have their own quarters, or else the situation would be too volatile. Luckily, their tastes are pretty simple, so I've decided to put them in the cleaning-equipment room just aft of the hold. I've already moved the equipment to the supply room."

  Just then the main lock buzzer announced the arrival of the newcomers, and the skipper cycled the lock open for their new shipmates. The first one through was a seven-footer, followed by a companion about half a foot shorter.

  "I am K'Stin," said the taller, "son of K'Tok, who is commander of the Avenger, grandson of K'Din, who slew thousands in the battle off Wotan, great-grandson of K'Tang, who built the first great clan ship, and so on back to K'Tchak, founder of the clan. This," he jerked a taloned thumb over his shoulder at the shorter one, "is B'Shant, whose ancestry is not quite as illustrious as mine, but is still quite respectable. He is my ninety-second, cousin by seven lines of parallel descent and forty-four marriage ties, with a number of ambiguous familial tangencies. I am sure that you soft and depraved persons have no appreciation of such things, but you may rejoice in our protective presence."

  "Pleased to meet you," the skipper said. "Now, I notice that you two are dripping with weapons, which is fine with me, since most of your duties will involve using them. However, we're now in space, so please hand over your lightbeam and high-velocity projectile weapons, to be put in the ship's arms locker."

  Both Vivers drew into defensive postures.

  "Nonsense!" shouted K'Stin. "Abandon weapons in the presence of strangers? I make scornful and insulting noises at you! I am struck with mirth at the very idea."

  Trouble already. Michelle stepped in diplomatically to smooth things over. "Now, gentlemen, surely you can't anticipate any threat from our feeble selves? I am sure that the eleven of us, armed or unarmed, could be no match for two of the glorious K'Tchak, or even for one. You must understand our anxiety about any device aboard ship that might damage the hull. Even a slight drop in our oxygen level can kill us, though it would be but a slight discomfort to you."

  "We never have accidents with weapons," K'Stin said. "You have nothing to fear."

  "True, of course, but there is always the possibility of a mechanical malfunction. Besides, the whole point of this exercise, for you, is the endurance of hardship and danger. Suppose you begin by learning to get along without those power weapons?"

  With poor grace they gave the skipper their powered arms, dipping into their bags until she had about a half-dozen from each. This did not leave them exactly unarmed. The deck was now littered with swords, clubs, collapsible spears, bows, slings, gar-rotes and a variety of other lethal hardware. The skipper dubiously eyed a bandolier of grenades K'Stin had handed her. "You sure that's all?" she asked.

  "They would not let us come heavily armed," K'Stin assured her. "If we need more powerful arms, we must make them. Only the bare essentials are allowed on the manhood test."

  Show them their quarters, Kelly," the skipper said. "We leave orbit in twenty minutes. K'Stin, you and B'Shant join us in the mess after you've stowed your gear and we'll fill you in on the mission." Turning to go, she muttered sotto voce, "Hah! As if I knew."

  "Come along," Torwald urged politely, as he and Kelly ushered the Vivers into the companionway and id ward the cleaning-equipment room. Kelly opened ilie hatch to their quarters and show
ed the pair inside, lie and Torwald had rigged two oversized bunks from tube steel and webbing and added a few shelves made from scrap. The room looked like a monk's cell.

  "Will this suit you?" asked Torwald.

  "I don't know," K'Stin ventured. "I've never had much taste for luxury."

  "Stick with us and we'll make a voluptuary out of you yet."

  "Your kinsman doesn't talk much," Kelly observed.

  "Of course not. B'Shant is my subordinate since I tore his leg off in the Adolescent Wrestling Rite." K'Stin continued, warming to the subject: "I was also champion in the Grand Post-Adolescent Free-For-All, which is fought with knives and clubs. I received highest marks in dismemberment and marksmanship throughout boyhood. None was better than I at hand weapons—with the exception of K'Tork, who was a little better with the heavy bill hook."

  When the Vivers had stowed their belongings, mostly lethal, on the shelves, Torwald conducted them to the mess.

  K'Stin looked as puzzled as a Viver can look when he entered. The skipper and Ham were seated at the table, and Sphere occupied its usual place of honor as centerpiece.

  "When do we jump to hyper?" K'Stin asked, directing his question at the skipper.

  "We already have."

  "Foolishness! Impossibility! The effects of interstellar jump are disturbing even to such magnificent creatures as us. Surely I would have noticed. Why do you deceive us?"

  "That thing"—the skipper pointed at Sphere—"is a living, unbelievably powerful entity. It possesses the secret of a far more efficient FTL drive that doesn't have the side effects of the Whoopee Drive. It's taking us to the center of the galaxy—"

  Both Vivers jumped up, hands on their knives.

  "This is insane!" B'Shant yelled, the first words he had spoken since coming aboard.

  K'Stin swatted him backhanded across the face for daring to speak first. The blow would have torn an ordinary man's head off. "Silence! I say what is insane around here! And I say this is insane!"