Chapter IV: Part 4

Trehearne was introduced to gravity tides and for the first time in his life he knew what real fear was. The generators throbbed incessantly. The _Saarga_ groaned and shrieked in all her iron bones, moving in erratic bursts of speed and sudden brakings, pitching and swerving as she felt her way in through shoals of suns, fighting the complex, ever-shifting gravitational fields. Trehearne got the feeling that he was trapped inside a giant football being battered back and forth between the stars.

Yann grinned. "It gets worse as you go farther in."

It did. Trehearne thought it was impossible for any ship to live in those mighty cross-currents of gravitation as the suns thickened like swarming bees. Forty times a day he was convinced that his end had come, and his only comfort was that the Hercules Cluster was a more noble place to die in than any he had seen on Earth. He wore out his emotional potential until he had no more to give and merely suffered the noises and the violent pitchings as the _Saarga_ rolled doggedly on her way. He had an idea that they must be deep into the heart of the cluster, and was somewhat daunted to learn, when the ship made her first landing, that they were still only on the fringe. He was too far gone to care much. All he wanted then was solid ground under his feet.

He emerged from the airlock into the light of a waning star, inexpressibly dim and sad, and looked out over a shadowy plain that glimmered even at midday with the distant glories of other suns, burning unconcerned. The plain was barren, scoured to the underlying rock by the winds that blew across it, dry and withering and cold. But there was a town there, very neat and gay with colors. It made Trehearne think of too-bright cosmetics on the face of a corpse. The _Saarga_ discharged food and ores and many small luxuries, receiving payment in gems of royal purple mined out of the grey rock by little men with sorrowful eyes. The place began to get on Trehearne's nerves. His duties kept him by the ship, checking bills of lading, but he watched the people who came out from the town. They were healthy, well-fed, well-dressed. But their bodies were stunted, and even the children's faces held a sadness that seemed as much a part of them as their skin, seeping into them from the dying sunlight and the dying soil. He saw the way they looked at the great ship and the men who flew in her, and how they glanced then at the hot flaming suns that were beyond their reach. They did not talk much. They only stood and looked. But once a group of children crept close to him and a small boy asked, in the _lingua franca_ of the trade worlds, "What is it like to fly the stars?"

The _Saarga_ did not stay there long, and Trehearne was glad. "Christ!" he said to Yann. "Those poor kids would break your heart. Couldn't they be moved or something? They're just dying slowly with their world."

Yann shook his head. "It's been tried, but it doesn't work. At planetary velocities, even a relatively short hop between stars takes years, and most people just can't take it psychologically. They crack up in all directions, or else they sort of wither and die. Besides, I suppose there's a sort of interstellar ecology. Old worlds die, and new ones are born, and if you started upsetting the normal balance you'd have every livable planet overrun with more population than it could support."

Thinking of the children, Trehearne said, "Ecology, hell. They're human beings."

Young Perri shrugged. "We all take our chances. You'll get used to it. Anybody know where we touch next?"

"It's on the board," Yann said. "A lovely place. Trehearne will like it. There aren't any people there at all."

Trehearne's education into the rights, privileges, and duties of a Vardda were only beginning. The _Saarga_ slowed again close to a cumulid variable of the most evil aspect and picked up a planet that turned out to be a worthy child of its parent. "Here's where we earn our money," Yann said. "Radiation suits, Trehearne. Full kit. Only the Old Man is exempt from this."

"What do we do?" Trehearne wanted to know.

"We pick fungus," Rohan told him not joyfully. "It makes a particularly fine antibiotic when it's been treated, but meanwhile don't get it on you. It's poisonous as hell. And be sure your oxygen lines are clear. The air is full of methane."

"He doesn't care," said Yann. "He's still full of the wonder of new worlds."

"Jeer away," Trehearne said equably. "I am."

ELEVEN

Trehearne trailed out with the rest of them, almost the whole ship's company, to gather the weird harvest. The radiation-suit he wore was not too heavy in weight--it couldn't be, for men who had to do hard work--a simple coverall of flexible metallic fabric, with a phone-equipped helmet and a separate knapsack oxygen-pack that could be quickly replaced when its oxygen was worked out.

The world he stood on was like something out of nightmare. Fungi higher than his head grew thickly, like a gruesome travesty of a forest, and in colors ranging from black to crimson and a yellow like spilled brains. The giant star--a sick, mad star, Trehearne thought, like all the short-period true variables--brooded in the poisonous sky, past the maximum peak of its brilliance now but still pouring out its febrile energies in a purplish glare. Trehearne grimaced, and shook his head. "This," he said, "is a planet only Weizsacker could love."

Perri's voice came over the helmet phone, curiously thin but so close at hand that Trehearne started. "Who's Weizsacker?"

"An Earthman with a theory. He advanced the idea that most stars have planets."

Rohan said incredulously, "You mean that anyone ever doubted it?"

"Oh, yes. Matter of fact, the general belief still is that Sol is unique in possessing planets, and that Sol Three, otherwise Earth, is unique in possessing life, particularly intelligent life."

Rohan swore, and then he laughed. "I never heard of such conceit. I thought you said Earthmen were civilized. Only savages have that wonderful conception of their own importance."

Armed with curved knives and big sacks of a thin plasticoid substance as flexible as cloth but air tight when it was sealed, the men spread out through the fungoid jungle. They kept more or less together in small groups. Trehearne could hear them talking, a confusion of voices over the helmet phone. He talked a lot himself, not about anything in particular, just talking for the sake of hearing something human. There was a strange and increasingly unpleasant feeling of isolation, locked up in his armor, breathing artificial air, unable to see much because of the helmet that restricted his field of vision. He moved with difficulty over spongy dust that sucked him down almost to the knees at every step. The light was lurid and hard on the eyes, and the ugly growths grew uglier by the minute, their vivid colors more revolting. It was hard to tell who was near him, with everyone masked out of human semblance by the shapeless suits. He tried to keep close to Yann and the two youngsters, checking them by voice.

"Don't bother with the big ones," Yann told him. "They aren't any good. Here, see the little pretties just coming up? Those are what we want."

Trehearne looked doubtfully at the size of his sack, and then at the nasty little mushroom-like heads thrusting up from the ground. "It'll take a long time to fill this thing."

"Hours. Might as well dig in."

Trehearne began patiently to work, bent over double or squattering clumsily along on his knees. The uncleanness of the place began to get on his nerves. Unavoidably he broke the adult growths from time to time and was showered with sooty black, or liverish pink, or ugly red and yellow dust, or was enveloped in clouds of spores. He tried to watch the others, but he lost track of them now and then. Sometimes they did not answer when he called them. A slow claustrophobia grew on him and had to be fought down. He sweated heavily inside his armor. His muscles tired, and still the huge sack was not filled.

The light of the cumulid star began visibly to fade.

Trehearne looked around. A wall of leprous color closed him in. There was no one in sight. "Yann?" he called. "Perri?"

"Hoi!" That was Perri. "Dull work, isn't it?"

"Disgusting. Where's Yann?"

"I don't know. Yann?"

"Here, damn it. If you'd pick more and talk less we'd be out of this pleasure garden sooner."

Trehearne could not place their positions. They sounded alike, all as though they spoke inside his own helmet. He worked on, hoping to catch sight of someone. The sick sun had worn out its burst of energy and was sinking into exhaustion, dimmer, redder, with the effect of an abnormal sunset. A kind of shadowy dusk crept between the feet of the tall distorted growths. Trehearne began to feel uneasy. He knew it was only the cumulative effect of the surroundings and the prisoning armor. He refused to pay attention to it. But it would not go away. It came in waves, with a prickling of nerve-ends and a lifting of the hair. He continued doggedly to throw the small fungi into his sack. He wanted to talk now more than ever, but he was afraid to, afraid that his unreasoning fear would show in his voice and disgrace him. He began to make long swings back and forth, trying to find somebody, but he could not, though he knew they must be close by. He was very hot, but his back turned cold and trickles of icy moisture ran down it. The unhealthy dusk grew thicker, and the shadows were red. He began to see movement out of the tail of his eye, as though something or someone walked stealthily just out of sight behind the screening growths.

"Yann?"

"What?" The bodiless, distanceless voice, speaking thinly in his ear.

"There's no life here, is there? I mean, outside of these stinking mushrooms."

"Not that anyone knows about. Why?"

"Nothing. It was only a trick of the shadows, I guess."

"Getting nervy, little Earthling?"

"Listen, the hell with you and your smart cracks."

"Think nothing of it," Yann said unabashed. "We all get nervy. I'm almost finished. How about you?"

"Pretty soon."

"Well, hurry up."

Silence. An occasional burst of voices over the helmet phones, confusing, jumbled. The men weren't talking so much now. They were tired, and the place oppressed them. Their spirits were going down like the light of the sun, sprawling hugely over half the sky with the red light running out of it like blood. Trehearne watched the shadows constantly, turning uneasily round and about with a blind feeling at his back. His nerves still pricked and rippled, and would not be quieted.

His sack was nearly full. He thought about the ship, about lights and familiar faces and getting off the suffocating armor. There was a monstrous fan-shaped growth glaring crimson in the sinking glow. It was flanked on one side by a bloated puffball colored black, and on the other by a crinkled, convoluted monster blotched with brown and yellow. It had at its feet a brood of little ones, enough to fill the remaining space in Trehearne's sack. He walked toward it, brushing by the blotched and convoluted thing. He felt at his back a sudden tug and a snapping. He turned, floundering in the soft mould with his heavy boots. He turned as fast as he could but there was no one, nothing, and then it dawned on him what had happened. His oxygen line had been ripped loose.

He began to shout. He didn't mind using his breath. He had very little left to use. He shouted in wild panic and began to run, nowhere in particular, butting and stumbling into the fungi, searching desperately for someone to help him before he died. "Where are you?" the voices were clamoring in his helmet. "Where are you?" And he kept screaming, "Here!" as though the word had any meaning, as though they could tell from the sound of his voice whether he was ten feet or half a mile away. The automatic valve-seal had closed at once to prevent the escape of what air there was in the armor, but it was getting hard to breathe. His lungs would exhaust the last of the oxygen in a minute or two, and then he could either suffocate in his armor, or rip off his helmet and burn his insides out with the methanated poison this world used for atmosphere. It was a lousy way to die and he didn't like it, and he couldn't figure out how it had happened. He must have fouled his line on some part of the fungus, that nasty one that looked like a monstrous brain. He must have passed too close to it and got hooked on some tough projection.... It was getting dark and he was sick at his stomach and his lungs were pumping, laboring, achieving nothing.

He tried to yell again, and couldn't make it. His knees caved under him and he fell, almost into the arms of a shapeless but human figure that was saying a lot of things he couldn't understand. He felt himself rolled over. There was a moment when the darkness closed down almost completely and then a stream of oxygen, pure and fresh, poured into his helmet. The mechanism that had so nearly stopped began to work again, not smoothly, with a good deal of gagging and choking, but working. Somebody's voice penetrated to him, telling him for God's sake not to get sick in his helmet, and he managed to sit up and look around.

Two men were bending over him, and a third stood behind them. He could recognize them through their face-plates. None were his bunkmates. There was somebody else behind him, holding him up. Voices were still clattering inside his helmet, demanding to be answered. He thought he heard Rohan and Perri, but he wasn't sure. "Who's that behind me?" he asked. His own voice came out as though there were hooks on it. His throat hurt. "Who's there?"

"Me. Yann. Welcome back, Trehearne. I thought for a minute you'd gone over the edge."

"Damn near it." His tongue felt like a feather bolster. "I don't know what happened...."

"Your air-line got snagged," said one of the men helpfully, telling Trehearne no news. He grunted and said,

"But how? I thought I must have hooked it on one of these ugly brutes, but they break so easily...."

"They toughen up as they age. Look here." The man reached out and took a horny protuberance in his hand. "Plenty of resistance, especially if your coupling was not properly tightened."

He didn't remember any such protuberances, and the blotched brain-shaped thing had looked bright and youthful. But he let it drop. He didn't know quite what other answer there could be, and right now he didn't want to think about it any more. Everything was lost in an overpowering desire to get back to the ship. He started to flounder up onto his feet, and Yann's powerful arm helped him. "Anyway," he said to the men in front of him, "thanks for saving my neck."

"Thank Yann. He had your air-line recoupled by the time we came. You were running right toward us, but you might not have made it if he hadn't found you first."

Trehearne turned round to face Yann. "Thanks."

"No trouble at all. I don't say I'd save you out from under the claws of something or other at the risk of my own skin, Trehearne, but since this was a simple task, think nothing of it. I was just lucky to find you. And next time don't stray so far away." He grinned and shoved Trehearne forward. "You aren't finished yet. You still have to explain to the Old Man why you lost your sack."

"Oh God," Trehearne muttered. But he didn't turn back. If the Skipper wanted that sack he could go and look for it. For the time being, Trehearne was through.

The _Saarga_ creaked and groaned and lurched her way deeper and deeper into the Cluster, touching like a tramp freighter at this port and that one, wherever there was trading to do and cargo to be had. Only her ports were planets, and her seas were the nighted gulfs between them. The memory of what had happened on the world of the variable star faded out of Trehearne's conscious mind, though he sometimes started awake in his bunk with the ghastly feeling of suffocation strong on him from a dream. But the succession of places and peoples, ever-shifting, ever-new, gave him too much to think about to waste his time brooding over something that was over and done. Insensibly, through habit and association, he was losing all sense of personal strangeness, becoming as thoroughly a Vardda as though he had been born on Llyrdis. Some of the first fine childlike glow of wonder wore off. It began to seem the most natural thing in life to go between the stars as between islands. The interest remained, but the feeling of awe departed.

They touched at systems that had a high degree of civilization, where Trehearne first saw the Vardda factories, vast walled compounds held under treaty, and crammed with warehouses full of goods from all over the galaxy. The system of the compound, the separate landing field, and the Vardda factory were universal wherever there was trade enough to warrant them, even on barbarian planets. "That's where the fortunes are made," Yann told him, and grinned. "I know. A few years in a factory, and you can retire."

Trehearne made a mental note of that, though he had no wish to be a factor. The _Saarga_ moved on. They traded with scaly humanoids under the glare of a blue-white sun. They stripped the worlds of a red giant, leaving cheap gilded trinkets in exchange for rare radioactive minerals, and the small wild people felt themselves enriched. Trehearne had been amazed at the persistent recurrence of the humanoid form even when the root-stock from which a particular race had evolved was not even remotely human, and Yann had explained to him what every Vardda school-child was taught in General Biology, that the development of the humanoid form (i.e., possessing a recognizable head, carried in a vertical or erect posture, two lower limbs used for purposes of locomotion, and two upper limbs used for manual tasks) rested simply upon the necessity of a species that intended to progress beyond the animal level of intelligence to evolve hands, or a workable substitute, and free them for use.

But human or humanoid, furred, scaled, feathered, or normally integumented, of whatever color or size or state of social development, one thing was common to all the races of all the worlds. They hated the Vardda. It was a hatred based purely on envy, and Trehearne became so used to it that he hardly thought about it any more, except to notice its variation according to cultures--the aboriginals who mixed with it a worshipful, superstitious fear of the Vardda starlords, the barbarians who would have killed them except that they were greedy for the luxuries of trade, the civilized folk who treated them with cold respect and ate their hearts out with jealous longing. The only thing that really bothered Trehearne was the children, especially the young boys, who followed the Vardda up and down the streets and as near as they were allowed to the ship, asking over and over the same eternal question--"What is it like to fly among the stars?"

He had almost forgotten Earth. And then they swung in toward the world of a yellow sun, a green world that tore his heart quite suddenly with a rush of memories. He stared out the port at distant fields and trees, and at a city that might have been an Earthly city, shorn of its dirt and slums and spreading along the bank of a mighty river, and he was astonished that he could still feel homesick.

Yann looked at him sourly. He was brushing and sprucing up his uniform, and Rohan and Perri were brushing theirs, and none of them looked happy.

"Looks pretty, doesn't it?" said Yann.

Trehearne nodded. He was looking at the river and thinking of the Mississippi. His mind was a long way off.

"Well, it is pretty," Yann muttered. "The climate's fine, the people are civilized, the women are handsome, and I'll bet even the food is good. But we're not allowed to enjoy them. We aren't even--"

The buzzing signal of the ship's intercom interrupted him, and the captain's face appeared on the small tele-screen.

"This is a warning, and a reminder. Here is where we do our trading with our hats in our hands and a humble look. Have you got that, all of you? You are to remain within the trading compound. You are not to fraternize with the natives. You are to show all deference to such members of the Hedarin as you may have contact with. And you are _not_, under any circumstances, to take offence at anything that may be said by them. In other words, keep your mouths shut until you're forced to open them, and then sing small. Those are orders, and I'll discipline any man that breaks them!"

The screen went dark. Trehearne looked at the others. "What kind of a place is this?"

"You heard the Old Man. It's a place where the Vardda apologize for living."

"Who are the Hedarin?"

"The lawgivers. The wise men. The speakers of the last word."

Young Perri gave his shoulders an expressive twist. "Creepy beggars," he said. "They're parapsychs."

TWELVE

The compound was large and chiefly empty, except for an open-sided building like a fair pavilion at one end of it. There was no factory, only the compound adjoining a landing field, outside the city. Large crowds were gathered beyond the low walls, much like any crowd on Earth, laughing, pushing, pointing at the ship, sending up an incessant gabble of talk. But the compound had only a few dozen men in it. They were inside the pavilion, waiting, and Trehearne was treated to the unusual spectacle of the Vardda captain and his officers marching humbly forward to ask permission to trade.

"Come a little closer," Yann whispered to him. "See those two tall men in the dun-colored robes, sitting at the back? They're Hedarin. Watch."

The Vardda officers spoke to the two men, and received a brief answer. "They give us two days," said Rohan. "Generous of them." Trehearne looked longingly over the compound wall. There were clumps of trees out there, and it must be coming on to fall, for the leaves were turning. The sky was intensely blue, with a soft haze low on the horizon, and the air was crisp. If you didn't look too closely it might be Ohio in October, and he wanted to go somewhere and walk alone, remembering. He didn't know why. Earth was behind him, and he did not regret it. But he wanted to go and walk among the turning trees.

Instead he got out lists and manifests and stood by, while the trading began. Goods and samples of goods, from trinkets to medicines and light machinery were brought out of the ship, and the bringing was done by the Vardda themselves. Trehearne helped, and all the cursing that was done was done quietly. "Too goddam proud to supply porters," somebody said. "The people wouldn't mind, but the Hedarin think it's debasing. Not the physical labor, you understand, but even the appearance of working for us. Me, I'd let 'em rot before I'd trade with them."

"The Old Man doesn't feel that way, so tail on, will you? This crate is heavy."

In the pavilion, the business went briskly. Only the Hedarin, sitting aloof, seemed unfriendly. Their faces gave Trehearne a peculiar feeling. Rather too small for their massive heads, though not so much as to be deformed, their features had a sort of iron strength that was almost chilling, as though the mind behind them had overswayed all the weaknesses of the flesh. Their eyes, deep set and light in color, seemed to look inward, not in the usual foggy contemplative way of people pondering over their thoughts, but as down a bright, clear vista where nothing was dark or doubtful, where no trivia could exist, no stirrings of emotion, no wayward impulse. They were splendid looking men. He had to admire them. But there was no thought of liking them. They watched the trading, and Trehearne began to notice that every item was offered for their approval before any bargain was struck. Most often it was granted, but now and then there would be a shake of the head and the article was rejected. The merchants might look regretful, but they did not protest.

"They swing an awful lot of weight," Trehearne said under his breath to Yann.

The First Officer, a slightly greying man who knew the Cluster like his own flower garden, was standing near and heard him. "So would you," he said, "if you could look inside a man's head and see all his thoughts, and into his body and trace the course of every gut, simply by using the power of your own mind."

"Uncomfortable people to have for rulers."

"They don't rule, in that sense. They're the physicians, the judges, the scientists--purely intellectual, a separate caste. They wouldn't stoop to anything as physical as ruling. They live entirely in and for the mind. In temporal matters they merely advise."

Remembering a certain Dr. Rhine, Trehearne asked, "Can they do everything? I mean, teleportation, telekinesis, telepathy, all the tricks?"

"They never discussed it with me, but I should think they could do all that, and more."

"Insolent bastards," said young Perri, scowling. His Vardda pride was hurt. Rohan kicked him. "Keep it to yourself. And don't even think too loud." Trehearne fidgeted. For the moment there was nothing to do, and he was standing with the others, six or seven of them, waiting. Finally he whispered, "What do we get here that makes it worth while?"

"Gem-stones," said Yann. "Fabulous. And their lapidaries rank as just about the best in the galaxy." He bent his head very close to Trehearne's and whispered, "All the same, I agree with Perri. Look at those merchants. Damned if I'd let anybody tell me what I could buy, and what I couldn't."

The Hedarin were out of earshot, and no whisper could possibly have carried to them over the buzz and chatter of the trading that was going on in front of them. Yet all at once they turned their heads, and Trehearne found himself looking straight into the glare of those clear light eyes. He felt Yann start involuntarily, and then something passed like a cold wind through his mind, touching every hidden corner of it with a casual ease that horrified him, and dropping it immediately after with an unmistakable contempt that enraged him. He shook his head in a futile but instinctive attempt to clear it of the invading presence and started forward in a blind temper, forgetting orders completely. The First Officer grabbed him and whispered fiercely, "Shut up!", though he hadn't said anything yet. The cold something winked out of his mind like a light going off. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the disturbed, astonished faces of his comrades, and he knew that the same thing had happened to them. And then a sudden glance passed between the Hedarin. They rose. One held up his arm and said, "The trading is ended."

All sound ceased at once. The merchants stood, disappointed and surprised, looking at the Hedarin, and then out of the uncomfortable silence came the voice of the Vardda captain, held rigidly under control. "But you gave us two days!"

"It is ended. Take up what is yours, and go."

The captain's voice was not now as polite. "I wish to know why. We've kept all the conventions...."

"We gave permission. Now we revoke it."

They gestured to the merchants, busy middle-aged men who looked like all the businessmen Trehearne had ever seen. Reluctant, but obedient, they turned away and began to walk out of the pavilion. Somebody--it sounded like the captain--said, "Of all the goddamned high-handed...." And then some other Vardda voice shouted to the merchants, "What are you, a bunch of children to be ordered around? Why don't you trade if you want to?"

One of the merchants answered, "The Hedarin are wise."

"Maybe," said Trehearne angrily. "Or maybe they just like to show off." He demanded of the men in the dun-colored robes, "What have you got against us?"

They did not answer, and Rohan said, laughing, "The same thing all the non-Vardda have against us. Also, we're crass, crude traders. We don't think."

"You think," said the Hedarin quietly. "And we do not want your thoughts. Among you there is more than baseness. There is murder."

Again there was a silence, and this time it had a quality of shock. The Vardda looked at one another, and suddenly Trehearne's spine turned cold. Shadows under a waning star, an ugly forest tight around him like a leprous wall, a tug, a snap, and death, unseen and unexplained but very capable, closing on him like a great dark fist.

Murder?

Voices, Vardda voices, aroused, indignant, challenging. The merchants were leaving, and the Hedarin had stepped down. The Vardda were demanding proof.

It couldn't be. No one aboard the _Saarga_ had anything against him. It must have been an accident. There was no reason to think it wasn't.

"Who is it?" roared the captain. "You can't make an accusation like that and then walk out...."

"We have no part in your affairs. You demanded a reason, and it was given. That is all."

Murder. It was an ugly word. Trehearne wished they hadn't said it. He wished the episode of the air-line hadn't happened. It opened the way for so much speculation. It made him apply the threat to himself, when after all, every member of the crew probably had at least one enemy he wouldn't mind killing. Everybody thought about it at one time or another. He had thought himself about killing Kerrel, but thinking was one thing, and doing it another.

Kerrel. Could he have hired somebody, to see that a certain Earthman did not come back from the Hercules Cluster?

Say he did. Who? Rohan? Perri? Yann? No, Yann had saved his life, and he couldn't see either of the youngsters in the role of a killer. Somebody else, then. He looked around at the familiar faces, angry now, resentful. Who? He could not pick one out. He knew them all. They were his shipmates. They might do a lot of things, but--murder?

The First Officer said a skatological word. "You could probe into any man's subconscious mind and find a wish to kill. It doesn't take a parapsych to know that. They just wanted an excuse."

"Yeah," said Yann. "The hell with 'em. Well, let's pick up our traps and go."

Trehearne thought the First Officer was probably right. It was the most comforting explanation. He clung to it. It seemed that if anyone had really wanted to kill, and had tried once, he would have tried again. They'd been to a lot of worlds and done a lot of things. There had been plenty of other chances.

Or had there? Who knew what might appeal to a murderer as a good chance? And he couldn't just kill. He had to make it look like an accident. That wouldn't be so easy.

Oh, hell, forget it. It _was_ an accident.

He did forget it, deliberately, as much as he could. But a certain uneasiness stayed with him, and he dreamed more often of the fungoid forest and the ghastly sensation of breathing without air. He began to want a change. He wouldn't have believed it a few months before, but he was getting sick of the ship, the confinement, the close quarters, the manufactured air and the palatable but synthetic food. He was not the only one. The most hardened veterans aboard were suffering from the ennui of a long voyage. They looked forward more and more to the landings, even on unpleasant worlds, and grumbled because they were so brief. By the time the _Saarga_ reached the system of the green star, the terminal point whence she would start the equally long return voyage, Trehearne was so hungry for land that even that lurking unease was thrust out of his mind by the sheer joy of making worldfall.

Yann was full of excitement. "This is the system I told you about, Trehearne--the one where I was factor so long. I got to know the natives like a brother." He laughed and clapped Trehearne on the shoulder. "We make a good stop here, and when our work's done I'll show you some things!"

The _Saarga_ set down on a world of emerald heat. Besides the starship the landing field contained half a dozen battered interplanetary craft, brought out piecemeal by the Vardda and operated by them between the wild planets of the system. The great stockaded factory was one of the largest Trehearne had seen and the strangest.

The "logs" that formed the stockade and made the walls of the warehouses were of crystal, cut from the crystalline forests that covered much of the land. Trehearne thought of them as trees and forests, simply because they had stems and branches, but they were inorganic, the glittering proliferation of sublimated alien chemicals. They glowed and flashed under the fierce green sun, showing glints of weird color where a prism formation broke the light. And also, in their shining branches, they netted the many-colored rays of the brighter stars that burned even in the daylight sky.

There was a town beyond the factory. It too was built of the crystal logs over foundations of black rock sunk in the ooze. Thick vines clambered everywhere, bearing bulbous fruit. Undergrowth, green almost to blackness, stood between the trees. There was a smell of fragrant rottenness, cloying, sweet.

Trehearne worked his long shifts, moving and sweating through a bath of molten jade. It was a large world and heavy. The gravity dragged at him. The letters of the freight lists swam under his eyes. When his own job was finally finished, he found Rohan and Perri still hard at it, but Yann was through and waiting for him.

"Come on with me now," said Yann, and smacked his lips. "Wine, cooled in deep wells. Make a new man of you."

"A hell of a world," said Trehearne.

"You should see the others of this system. This is the pick of the lot."

They walked through the outer compound, a sort of caravanserai crowded with folk from the other planets, brought in for the trading. Cold-blooded creatures with crimson eyes, ophidian princes of the inner worlds, wrapped in golden mantles against the chill. Slim, furred kings of the outer planets, capped and girdled with precious stones, still and panting in the heat. These and others watched the two tall Vardda, thinking their own thoughts.

They passed through the gate out of the factory, wading in soggy mud. The sun was setting in a welter of lurid green, tinged with peacock hues. Trehearne looked at the town ahead, the straggling lanes, the crystal huts that crouched in sordid beauty, the encircling forest of ungodly trees. Doubt assailed him.

"Perhaps we should stay in the factory. There'll be plenty of wine and more comfort."

Yann cursed him good-naturedly. "I told you I know these people better than I know my own children! Come on, Trehearne, there's nothing to do in the factory. Don't you want to see something new?"

Trehearne did. He was sick of the factory, after those long shifts of sweating labor. He shrugged, and made sure of the prismed shock-tube in his belt. It was customary, when the Vardda went abroad on strange worlds, for them to carry a weapon. They were sometimes needed. Yann noticed the gesture and grinned. His own belt-holster was empty.

"I'd feel safer with one myself," he said, "but these people we're going to see are my friends. They'd be mortally offended if I came armed--a sign I didn't trust them, you see, and then look out!" He led the way down the muddy road, and Trehearne followed.

Night came. The glorious sky of the Cluster crashed down on them, sown to bursting with stars as bright as moons. The crystalline trees took on opaline fires. The hut walls glittered. Around the two Vardda gathered a crowd of sloe-eyed children, silent and solemn, with hides of dusky green. Women watched them from the doorways. Human enough and pretty enough too, the younger ones, sleek and olive-colored, wearing bright silks from Llyrdis about their hips and baubles in their hair.

Yann chattered happily as they went along the winding lanes, telling of his multifarious sins and adventurings and the clever ways in which he had cheated the factory. The hostile curious eyes of the women followed them and now and again a man spat expressively into the mud behind them.

They came at last to a hut on the outskirts of the town. Beside it were chained four pairs of beasts the size of harriers, milk-white with dark muzzles and feet, the undulating bodies built light and long for speed. They made shrill barking sounds and leaped at the strangers, showing hungry fangs. Trehearne thought they looked like gigantic weasels--and quite as friendly.

"Hounds," said Yann. "Kurat is a hunter. I had a private arrangement with him for skins." He winked hugely and lifted up his voice, shouting in the native tongue an obvious demand for Kurat to come out and welcome his brother.

A lean, hard-muscled man emerged. He wore a loin-cloth of brilliant blue silk, not very clean, and a necklet of hammered metal. He greeted Yann with glad cries. Trehearne smiled inwardly. They were two of a kind, the Vardda and the hunter, a brace of happy scoundrels. Kurat welcomed him in the _lingua franca_ of the factory towns. A brother of Yann, it seemed, was his brother also. He swept Trehearne before him into the hut.

There was a numerous family inside. A very old man and woman sat in a corner, doing nothing. Babes and children cluttered the floor. Kurat's hulking wife waded imperturbably among them. A handsome younger woman brought in a great sweating jug and poured from it into Trehearne's cup. The wine was cold and bitter. Trehearne, draining it, began to forget the heat and his weariness. Then, as he looked up into the young woman's face, he was startled by the hatred in her watching eyes.

He said suddenly, "Why do you hate us so?"

She laughed metallically. "Is there any world where the Vardda are loved?"

"Because we are able to fly the stars and you aren't?"

"Because we too could have had the stars and you Vardda kept us from it!"

Trehearne stared at her, disconcerted by her sudden passion. "But the secret was lost...."

"Oh, yes! And even on this far world we know how it was lost! All the universe has heard of Orthis and of how the Vardda drove him into the depths of space and destroyed him because he would have shared his knowledge. And so you are free and I am chained, and my children after me forever."

She turned abruptly away from him. He looked after her, depressed by this new proof of what bitter depths of hostility lay behind the faces of the non-Vardda.

But Yann shook his shoulder. "Kurat has made a kill today--a rare skin. Come outside and look at it. It could be worth a lot of money."

Less from interest than to escape his own oppression, Trehearne rose. They went out a back way. There was a shed some distance away, where Kurat said the hide was drying. Yann and he chatted in the unfamiliar jargon. Trehearne was not much interested in the whole business.

It was dark inside the shed. Yann said, "Wait a minute while I make a light."

Trehearne waited but not long. The light exploded inside his own skull. He heard Kurat grunt behind him with the exertion of the blow, then laugh. Yann was laughing too.

Trehearne knew a moment of murderous fury and then the world of the green star slipped away from under him.

When it returned again into his ken, he was sprawled on his face in mud, stripped of his tunic, his jewelled belt, his shocker and his sandals. The hut of Kurat had vanished, the town with it. He was in the forest, encircled by trees whose crystal branches glittered under the savage stars. His head hurt violently.

He got unsteadily to his feet with only one thought in his mind--the determination to get his hands on his good friend Yann. He took three steps in no particular direction--and then stopped, bathed in a sudden icy sweat.

In the distance and not too far away he heard the high-pitched cry of Kurat's strange hounds.

THIRTEEN

Trehearne's mind cleared with an almost physical wrench. The fumes of the wine left it, and the thick obscurity put there by the blow. The pain stayed, but he could think. He could remember. The world of the cumulid star. The man in the dun-colored robe saying, Murder.

Murder. Yann.

_Don't thank me, it was Yann that saved you. He had your air-line recoupled...._

Crazy. It couldn't be Yann.

It was. He had followed him meekly into a trap and sat there meekly drinking while Yann and Kurat talked jovially over his head, arranging the details.

The cry of the pack was nearer.

They would not want his body in the hut or in the town. They would not want it to seem like murder. They would carry him into the forest, and then set the hounds after him, leaving the beasts to do the final work. Who could be blamed if a drunken Vardda wandered off where he had no business to be and was pulled down by a pack of hounds? He wondered if Yann and Kurat were following the hunt. He wondered why Yann wanted him dead.

Yann. The dirty treacherous son of a bitch....

Trehearne began to run.

The ropy vines that crept and clambered among the crystal trees were like nooses set to catch his feet. He fell, and rose, and ran again, and the spongy ground gave softly under his feet like sand. It was very hot, and he was heavy, heavy with the drag of a heavy world.

Behind him, clear and shrill, came the _yap-yap-yaahhh!_ of Kurat's weasel hounds, racing over a fresh scent. The crystal branches gleamed and sparkled, tipped with star-fire, sharp-tipped like spears. Trehearne stopped and tried to break one and it was like trying to break a bar of steel with his bare hands. He gave it up and fled onward, not knowing where he was or where he was going, only wanting to stay away as long as he could from the lithe white demons that were hunting him. There was a little river, black and warm. He waded upstream in it, splashing to his waist, swimming in the deeper pools. The bitter wine had left him thirsty, and he drank. The water tasted foully of pitch and slime and he spat it out again, gasping. He heard the voice of the pack change to a querulous whining as they checked by the bank of the stream where he had entered it. He sank down to rest and listened to them casting back and forth. He thought he heard a man's voice shouting but he could not be sure. He went on again, striking away from the river and into the forest. The great stars were pounding against his head and his body was leaden with many extra pounds of weight by gravitation.

He prayed for a fallen branch, but there was none. He prayed to find the town and that too was denied him. He ran heavily under the glittering trees and behind him the hounds burst suddenly into full cry, more distant now but as chilling to the blood. It would not be long before they overtook him.

He measured the trees with an eye to climbing one for refuge. They were glassy and badly shaped, and they were low. He remembered the long whipcord bodies of the weasel-like beasts. He thought they could leap as high as they needed to pull him down. He staggered on, and every time he fell it was harder to get up again. A terrible rage was on him, rage against Yann. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to make a man run for his life on a world where he couldn't run. The cry of the pack came closer.

Abruptly, from somewhere ahead of him, rose the challenging voices of other hounds.

Trehearne stopped. He was caught now, between two fires. There was no use in going on. He choked on the acrid gorge of fear that filled his throat and cast about for a weapon, something, anything, to hold in his hands, to kill with, at least a little before he was torn apart.

It came to him that the yelping of the beasts ahead was stationary. It was irritable. They were not hunting. They were chained. Trehearne sobbed. He began to run again.

There was a clearing. He saw it ahead dimly through the starshine and the trees. He strove to reach it, and the pack-cry clamored at his heels. He tripped and pitched headlong and was almost happy, because he had fallen over a tangle of branches left from the breaking and clearing of the crystal trees. He caught one up. It was not long but it was sharp and heavy. It was better than nothing. He plunged forward with it into the edge of the open space, and there the hounds of Kurat bayed him.

Swift and undulant, white as frost in the starlight, they came leaping beautifully between the glistening trees. They cried out once, all together, and then they were still, still as arrows in mid-flight, arching toward him through the air. He set his back against a glassy trunk and swung his broken crystal branch. He struck some of them. But there were fangs set like hot irons in his flesh.

There was a hut in the center of the clearing. Four of the hunting-beasts were leashed beside it. They were the ones that had answered Kurat's pack. Now they snarled and screamed and fought their leashes. A man, a woman, and a tall boy came out of the hut. The boy started to run toward Trehearne, shouting. The man caught him. He spoke to the boy and made him be still. They stood there, watching.

Trehearne killed one of the hounds with his crystal club, and one he crippled. The remaining six boiled around him, a liquid tangle of bodies leaping, flowing, slashing with the white knives of their teeth. The blood ran on Trehearne's body. He swung and swung again, and yelled for help to the man and woman who watched stolidly.

They did not move. The boy tried to, and the man cuffed him.

Trehearne uttered a hoarse sound and dropped the branch. One of the brutes had fastened on his wrist. Its weight dragged him to his knees and he knew that this was the finish, the last of his voyaging amidst the stars. He tore the strong jaws out of his flesh and swung the brute as a flail in the faces of its mates and then he could hold it no longer and the pack closed in.

The boy had slunk back into the shadows by the hut wall. Now, suddenly, he reached and slipped the thongs from around the necks of the tethered hounds.

They tore across the clearing over the jagged stumps and flung themselves upon the pack of Kurat.

For a moment the beasts forgot Trehearne. He scrambled free of the snarling tangle and went toward the hut. The man rushed by him, howling. He picked up a branch and began to beat the battling hounds, struggling to separate them. The woman wailed and ran to help him. The boy came to Trehearne.

He was not much above sixteen, tall and well made. He put his arm around Trehearne's waist and took him into the hut and sat him down. Trehearne was glad to sit. The room reeled and darkened around him. When his sight cleared the boy had brought cloths and a pungent salve and was binding his cuts.

"What is your name?" asked Trehearne in the _lingua franca_.

"Torin."

"You saved my life, Torin. I will not forget it."

"I would do anything for the Vardda." Instead of hate there was hero-worship in this non-Vardda face. It was obvious that in the boy's eyes Trehearne was a figure of glory. Trehearne was touched.

Torin stared at him, his task forgotten. And he asked the question, the old unchanging question that was always on the lips of boys. "What is it like--what is it really like, to fly between the stars?"

Trehearne put his hand on the lean young shoulder and lied. "It is long and hard and not nearly as adventurous as hunting. I'll wager that you're as good a hunter as your father."

"Not yet," said Torin. "Some day...." He bent to his work again. His fingers moved over Trehearne's flesh, touching the muscles, spreading the wounds, gentle with the thick salve. He scowled, brooding over some question of his own. "It feels like mine," he said. "It bleeds like mine and here is an old scar and there will be new ones. It is not a different flesh, made of iron or some other thing."

He sprang up. "Look!" he cried. "I am strong, very strong. See, my flesh is hard like yours. Surely it is not true that only the Vardda can fly in the great ships! Surely I am strong enough to go out and see the stars!"

Trehearne could not meet his eager eyes. He said, "It takes a different kind of strength." He tried to explain and gave it up. He could only say, "I'm sorry."

He got up. "Will you guide me to the compound, Torin? And think what you would like out of all the things that are there. I can't take my life from you without giving something back--a little gift between friends."

Torin whispered, "I want to see the ship."

Trehearne frowned and in the interval of silence he heard the noises from the clearing--the whining growl of hounds and the sudden lifting of human voices.

"Your parents?"

"No," said Torin. "They are still trying to catch our beasts in the forest."

"Look out and see who has come, Torin."

He flattened himself in the corner behind the door. The boy opened it and peered.

"Two men," he whispered. "A hunter whose name is Kurat--and a Vardda." He drew back and looked at Trehearne. "They were hunting you?"

Trehearne nodded. His face had tightened and grown cruel. "Give me a knife."

Torin handed him a skinning blade of crystal chipped to a razor edge. Trehearne said, "Go and tell them I am dead from the hounds' tearing. Tell the Vardda to come and help you carry out my body."

Torin hesitated, then he went. Trehearne heard him calling across the clearing. The gabble of voices increased and Yann's familiar laughter sounded. The boy was talking, telling the details of Trehearne's dying.

Yann strode into the hut.

He came confidently. He had nothing to fear. And then Trehearne's arm was around his throat and the point of the knife was biting in under the angle of the jaw.

"Don't move," said Trehearne. And again, "Don't move!"

Yann stood still. Blood was running down the side of his neck. "You'll cut the vein," he whispered. "No deeper, please, no deeper."

He had not picked up any weapons on the way. There was none in his belt, none in his hands. Trehearne took the point of the knife out of Yann's throat and then he hit him. Yann fell sprawling on the floor. He started to complain, and Trehearne kicked him, as hard as he could with his bare foot, twice in the ribs, wanting to hear bone break. Yann's breath came out with a rush. Over his shoulder Trehearne said to Torin, wide-eyed in the doorway, "Keep watch, and tell me if anyone comes."

"They are busy with the hounds and with talking," the boy said. And then, "Will you kill him?"

"I'd enjoy it." Trehearne touched Yann again with his foot. "You tried it that other time, too, didn't you? God damn it, answer me! Didn't you?"

Coughing, his face against the floor, Yann muttered, "Yes."

"You crept up behind me, between those growths. You pulled my air-line loose and ducked before I could turn around. You went to a lot of trouble. Why did you save my life?"