Space Service

by Andre Norton

  “Herald,” said the port official, “tell the merchant to sign here and make his fingerprints.”

  Alen studied the document; it was a simple identification form. Blackbeard signed with the reed pen provided and fingerprinted the document. After two weeks in space he scarcely needed to ink his fingers first.

  “Now tell him that we’ll release the gems on his written fingerprinted order to whatever Lyran citizens he sells to. And explain that this roundabout system is necessary to avoid metal smuggling. Please remove all metal from your clothes and stow it on your ship. Then we will seal that, too, and put it under guard until you are ready to take off. We regret that we will have to search you before we turn you loose, but we can’t afford to have our economy disrupted by irresponsible introduction of metals.” Alen had not realized it was that bad.

  After the thorough search that extended to the confiscation of forgotten watches and pins, the port officials changed a sheaf of the trader’s uranium-backed Vegan currency into Lyran legal tender based on man-hours. Blackbeard made a partial payment to the crew, told them to have a good liberty and check in at the port at sunset tomorrow for probable take-off.

  Alen and the trader were driven to town in an unlikely vehicle whose power plant was a pottery turbine. The driver, when they were safely out on the open road, furtively asked whether they had any metal they wanted to discard.

  The trader asked sharply in his broken Lyran: “What you do you get metal? Where sell, how use?”

  The driver, following a universal tendency, raised his voice and lapsed into broken Lyran himself to tell the strangers: “Black market science men pay much, much for little bit metal. Study, use build. Politicians make law no metal, what I care politicians? But you no tell, gentlemen?”

  “We won’t tell,” said Alen. “But we have no metal for you.”

  The driver shrugged.

  “Herald,” said the trader, “what do you make of it?”

  “I didn’t know it was a political issue. We concern ourselves with the basic patterns of a people’s behavior, not the day-to-day expressions of the patterns. The planet’s got no heavy metals, which means there were no metals available to the primitive Lyrans. The lighter metals don’t occur in native form or in easily-split compounds. They proceeded along the ceramic line instead of the metallic line and appear to have done quite well for themselves up to a point. No electricity, of course, no aviation and no space flight.”

  “And,” said the trader, “naturally the people who make these buggies and that blowtorch we saw are scared witless that metals will be imported and put them out of business. So naturally they have laws passed prohibiting it.”

  “Naturally,” said the Herald, looking sharply at the trader. But blackbeard was back in character a moment later. “An outrage,” he growled. “Trying to tell a man what he can and can’t import when he sees a decent chance to make a bit of profit.”

  The driver dropped them at a boardinghouse. It was half-timbered construction, which appeared to be swankier than the more common brick. The floors were plate glass, roughened for traction. Alen got them a double room with a view.

  “What’s that thing?” demanded the trader, inspecting the view. The thing was a structure looming above the slate and tile roofs of the town—a round brick tower for its first twenty-five meters and then wood for another fifteen. As they studied it, it pricked up a pair of ears at the top and began to flop them wildly.

  “Semaphore,” said Alen.

  A minute later blackbeard piteously demanded from the bathroom: “How do you make water come out of the tap? I touched it all over but nothing happened.”

  “You have to turn it,” said Alen, demonstrating. “And that thing—you pull it sharply down, hold it and then release.”

  “Barbarous,” muttered the trader. “Barbarous.”

  An elderly maid came in to show them how to string their hammocks and ask if they happened to have a bit of metal to give her for a souvenir. They sent her away and, rather than face the public dining room, made a meal from their own stores and turned in for the night.

  It’s going well, thought Alen drowsily: going very well indeed.

  He awoke abruptly, but made no move. It was dark in the double room, and there were stealthy, furtive little noises nearby. A hundred thoughts flashed through his head of Lyran treachery and double-dealing. He lifted his eyelids a trifle and saw a figure silhouetted against the faint light of the big window. If a burglar, he was a clumsy one.

  There was a stirring from the other hammock, the trader’s. With a subdued roar that sounded like “Thieving villains!” blackbeard launched himself from the hammock at the intruder. But his feet tangled in the hammock cords and he belly-flopped on the floor.

  The burglar, if it was one, didn’t dash smoothly and efficiently for the door. He straightened himself against the window and said resignedly: “You need not fear. I will make no resistance.”

  Alen rolled from the hammock and helped the trader to his feet. “He said he doesn’t want to fight,” he told the trader.

  Blackbeard seized the intruder and shook him like a rat. “So the rogue is a coward too!” he boomed. “Give us a light, Herald.”

  Alen uncovered the slow-match, blew it to a flame, squeakily pumped up a pressure torch until a jet of pulverized coal sprayed from its nozzle and ignited it. A dozen strokes more and there was enough heat feeding back from the jet to maintain the pressure cycle.

  Through all of this the trader was demanding in his broken Lyran: “What make here, thief? What reason thief us room?”

  The Herald brought the hissing pressure lamp to the window. The intruder’s face was not the unhealthy, neurotic face of a criminal. Its thin lines told of discipline and thought.

  “What did you want here?” asked Alen.

  “Metal,” said the intruder simply. “I thought you might have a bit of iron.”

  It was the first time a specific metal had been named by any Lyran. He used, of course, the Vegan word for iron.

  “You are particular,” remarked the Herald. “Why iron?”

  “I have heard that it possesses certain properties—perhaps you can tell me before you turn me over to the police. Is it true, as we hear, that a mass of iron whose crystals have been aligned by a sharp blow will strongly attract another piece of iron with a force related to the distance between them?”

  “It is true,” said the Herald, studying the man’s face. It was lit with excitement. Deliberately Alen added: “This alignment is more easily and uniformly effected by placing the mass of iron in an electric field—that is, a space surrounding the passage of an electron stream through a conductor.” Many of the words he used had to be Vegan; there were no Lyran words for “electric,” “electron” or “conductor.”

  The intruder’s face fell. “I have tried to master the concept you refer to,” he admitted. “But it is beyond me. I have questioned other interstar voyagers and they have touched on it, but I cannot grasp it—But thank you, sir; you have been very courteous. I will trouble you no further while you summon the watch.”

  “You give up too easily,” said Alen. “For a scientist, much too easily. If we turn you over to the watch, there will be hearings and testimony and whatnot. Our time is limited here on your planet; I doubt that we can spare any for your legal processes.”

  The trader let go of the intruder’s shoulder and grumbled: “Why you no ask we have iron, I tell you no. Search, search, take all metal away. We no police you. I sorry hurted your arms. Here for you.” Blackbeard brought out a palmful of sample gems and picked out a large triple-fire stone. “You not be angry me,” he said, putting it in the Lyran’s hand.

  “I can’t—” said the scientist.

  Blackbeard closed his fingers over the stone and growled: “I give, you take. Maybe buy iron with, eh?”

  “That’s so,” said the Lyran. “Thank you both, gentlemen. Thank you—”

  “You go,” said the trader. “You go,
we sleep again.”

  The scientist bowed with dignity and left their room.

  “Gods of space,” swore the trader. “To think that Jukkl, the Starsong’s wiper, knows more about electricity and magnetism than a brainy fellow like that.”

  “And they are the key to physics,” mused Alen. “A scientist here is dead-ended forever, because their materials are all insulators! Glass, clay, glaze, wood.”

  “Funny, all right,” yawned blackbeard. “Did you see me collar him once I got on my feet? Sharp, eh? Good night, Herald.” He gruntingly hauled himself into the hammock again, leaving Alen to turn off the hissing light and cover the slow-match with its perforated lid.

  They had roast fowl of some sort or other for breakfast in the public dining room. Alen was required by his Rule to refuse the red wine that went with it. The trader gulped it approvingly. “A sensible, though backward people,” he said. “And now if you’ll inquire of the management where the thievish jewel-buyers congregate, we can get on with our business and perhaps be off by dawn tomorrow.”

  “So quickly?” asked Alen, almost forgetting himself enough to show surprise.

  “My charter on Starsong, good Herald—thirty days to go, but what might not go wrong in space? And then there would be penalties to mulct me of whatever minute profit I may realize.”

  Alen learned that Gromeg’s Tavern was the gem mart and they took another of the turbine-engined cabs through the brick-paved streets.

  Gromeg’s was a dismal, small-windowed brick barn with heavy-set men lounging about, an open kitchen at one end and tables at the other. A score of smaller, sharp-faced men were at the tables sipping wine and chatting.

  “I am Journeyman-Herald Alen,” announced Alen clearly, “with Vegan gems to dispose of.”

  There was a silence of elaborate unconcern, and then one of the dealers spat and grunted: “Vegan gems. A drug on the market. Take them away, Herald.”

  “Come, master trader,” said Alen in the Lyran tongue. “The gem dealers of Lyra do not want your wares.” He started for the door.

  One of the dealers called languidly: “Well, wait a moment. I have nothing better to do; since you’ve come all this way I’ll have a look at your stuff.”

  “You honor us,” said Alen. He and blackbeard sat at the man’s table. The trader took out a palmful of samples, counted them meaningfully and laid them on the boards.

  “Well,” said the gem dealer, “I don’t know whether to be amused or insulted. I am Garthkint, the gem dealer—not a retailer of beads. However, I have no hard feelings. A drink for your frowning friend, Herald? I know you gentry don’t indulge.” The drink was already on the table, brought by one of the hulking guards.

  Alen passed Garthkint’s own mug of wine to the trader, explaining politely: “In my master trader’s native Cepheus it is considered honorable for the guest to sip the drink his host laid down and none other. A charming custom, is it not?”

  “Charming, though unsanitary,” muttered the gem dealer—and he did not touch the drink he had ordered for blackbeard.

  “I can’t understand a word either of you is saying—too flowery. Was this little rat trying to drug me?” demanded the trader in Cephean.

  “No,” said Alen. “Just trying to get you drunk.” To Garthkint in Lyran, he explained, “The good trader was saying that he wishes to leave at once. I was agreeing with him.”

  “Well,” said Garthkint, “perhaps I can take a couple of your gauds. For some youngster who wishes a cheap ring.”

  “He’s getting to it,” Alen told the trader.

  “High time,” grunted blackbeard.

  “The trader asks me to inform you,” said Alen, switching back to Lyran, “that he is unable to sell in lots smaller than five hundred gems.”

  “A compact language, Cephean,” said Garthkint, narrowing his eyes.

  “Is it not?” Alen blandly agreed.

  The gem dealer’s forefinger rolled an especially fine three-fire stone from the little pool of gems on the table. “I suppose,” he said grudgingly, “that this is what I must call the best of the lot. What, I am curious to know, is the price you would set for five hundred equal in quality and size to this poor thing?”

  “This,” said Alen, “is the good trader’s first venture to your delightful planet. He wishes to be remembered and welcomed all of the many times he anticipates returning. Because of this he has set an absurdly low price, counting good will as more important than a prosperous voyage. Two thousand Lyran credits.”

  “Absurd,” snorted Garthkint. “I cannot do business with you. Either you are insanely rapacious or you have been pitifully misguided as to the value of your wares. I am well known for my charity; I will assume that the latter is the case. I trust you will not be too downcast when I tell you that five hundred of these muddy, undersized out-of-round objects are worth no more than two hundred credits.”

  “If you are serious,” said Alen with marked amazement, “we would not dream of imposing on you. At the figure you mention, we might as well not sell at all but return with our wares to Cepheus and give these gems to children in the streets for marbles. Good gem trader, excuse us for taking up so much of your time and many thanks for your warm hospitality in the matter of the wine.” He switched to Cephean and said: “We’re dickering now. Two thousand and two hundred. Get up; we’re going to start to walk out.”

  “What if he lets us go?” grumbled blackbeard, but he did heave himself to his feet and turn to the door as Alen rose.

  “My trader echoes my regrets,” the Herald said in Lyran. “Farewell.”

  “Well, stay a moment,” said Garthkint. “I am well known for my soft heart toward strangers. A charitable man might go as high as five hundred and absorb the inevitable loss. If you should return some day with a passable lot of real gems, it would be worth my while for you to remember who treated you with such benevolence and give me fair choice.”

  “Noble Lyran,” said Alen, apparently almost overcome. “I shall not easily forget your combination of acumen and charity. It is a lesson to traders. It is a lesson to me. I shall not insist on two thousand.

  I shall cut the throat of my trader’s venture by reducing his price to eighteen hundred credits, though I wonder how I shall dare tell him of it.”

  “What’s going on now?” demanded blackbeard.

  “Five hundred and eighteen hundred,” said Alen. “We can sit down again.”

  “Up, down—up, down,” muttered the trader.

  They sat, and Alen said in Lyran: “My trader unexpectedly indorses the reduction. He says, ‘Better to lose some than all’—an old proverb in the Cephean tongue. And he forbids any further reduction.”

  “Come, now,” wheedled the gem dealer. “Let us be men of the world about this. One must give a little and take a little. Everybody knows he can’t have his own way forever. I shall offer a good, round eight hundred credits and we’ll close on it, eh? Pilquis, fetch us a pen and ink!” One of the burly guards was right there with an inkpot and a reed pen. Garthkint had a Customs forms out of his tunic and was busily filling it in to specify the size, number and fire of gems to be released to him.

  “What’s it now?” asked blackbeard.

  “Eight hundred.”

  “Take it!”

  “Garthkint,” said Alen regretfully, “you heard the firmness and decision in my trader’s voice? What can I do? I am only speaking for him. He is a hard man but perhaps I can talk him around later. I offer you the gems at a ruinous fifteen hundred credits.”

  “Split the difference,” said Garthkint resignedly.

  “Done at eleven-fifty,” said Alen.

  That blackbeard understood. “Well done!” he boomed at Alen and took a swig from Garthkint’s winecup. “Have him fill in ‘Sack eighteen’ on his paper. It’s five hundred of that grade.”

  The gem dealer counted out twenty-three fifty-credit notes and blackbeard signed and fingerprinted the release.

  “Now,” s
aid Garthkint, “you will please remain here while I take a trip to the spaceport for my property.” Three or four of the guards were suddenly quite close.

  “You will find,” said Alen dryly, “that our standard of commercial morality is no lower than yours.”

  The dealer smiled politely and left.

  “Who will be the next?” asked Alen of the room at large.

  “I’ll look at your gems,” said another dealer, sitting at the table.

  With the ice-breaking done, the transactions went quicker. Alen had disposed of a dozen lots by the time their first buyer returned.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “We’ve been tricked before, but your gems are as represented. I congratulate you, Herald, on driving a hard, fair bargain.”

  “That means,” said Alen regretfully, “that I should have asked for more.” The guards were once more lounging in comers and no longer seemed so menacing.

  They had a mid-day meal and continued to dispose of their wares. At sunset Alen held a final auction to clean up the odd lots that remained over and was urged to stay to dinner.

  The trader, counting a huge wad of the Lyran manpower-based notes, shook his head. “We should be off before dawn, Herald,” he told Alen. “Time is money, time is money.”

  “They are very insistent.”

  “And I am very stubborn. Thank them and let us be on our way before anything else is done to increase my overhead.”

  Something did turn up—a city watchman with a bloody nose and split lip.

  He demanded of the Herald: “Are you responsible for the Cephean maniac known as Elwon?”

  Garthkint glided up to mutter in Alen’s ear: “Beware how you answer!”