Odyssey. Part 11

And I survived. My hands toughened, my muscles strengthened, my skin hardened against the cold and the rain. I learned to sleep in icy slush, without protection, with h.o.r.n.y feet stumbling over me in the dark; to swallow the watery gruel and hold out the cup for more; to take the routine club-blows of the overseers without hitting back; in the end, without really noticing. There were no friendships on the rafts, no recreations. There was no time or energy for anything not directly related to staying alive for one more day. The Drathian who had helped me on the first day died one wet night, and another took his place; I had never even learned his name.

During my years in s.p.a.ce, I had developed an instinctive time-sense that told me when a week, or a month, Earth-style, had pa.s.sed. I had been almost five years away, now. Sometimes I wondered what had happened during those years, back on that small planet. But it was so far away that it seemed more like a dream than a reality.

For hours at a stretch, sometimes for a whole double shift, my mind would wander far away from the pelagic rafts of Drath. My memories seemed to become more vivid with time, until they were almost realer than the meaningless life around me.

And then one night, the routine broke. A morose-looking Drathian boss-overseer caught me as I went toward the chzik chute, shoved me toward the boat wharf.

"You're a.s.signed as a net-handler," he told me. Except for the heavy leather coat he was wearing, he looked as cold and filthy and miserable as the slaves. I climbed down into the twenty-foot, double-prowed dory that was pitching in the choppy water at the foot of the loading ladder, and we shoved off. In five minutes the high-sided raft was out of sight in the ragged fog.

I sat in the stern and stared at the oily gray surface of the water. It was the first new sight I'd seen in many months. The wake was a swirl of foam that drifted aft, forming a pattern like an ugly face that leered up at me through the murky water. The face grew clearer, and then it broke water, a devil-mask of rippling black leaves edged with feathery red gills. An arm swept up, dripping water; I saw the flash of a knife blade as it swept down toward me-and felt the rope fall from my neck. A wide hand clamped on my arm, tumbled me over the stern, and before I could draw a breath, had dragged me down into the cold and the dark.

5.

I woke up lying on my back in a warm, dry place. From the motion and the sound, I could tell I was on a boat. The air that moved over my face carried the sweet, clean smell of the sea. Fsha-fsha was standing beside the bunk; in the soft glow from the deck lamp, his face looked almost benign.

"It's a good thing I recognized you," I said, and was surprised at the weakness of my voice. "I might have spoiled things by putting a thumb in your eye."

"Sorry about the rough treatment," he said. "It was the best we could work out. The tender-master wasn't in on it; just the boss-overseer."

"It worked," I said, and stopped to cough, and tasted the alien salt.w.a.ter of Drath. "That's all that counts."

"We're not clear yet, but the trickiest part went all right. Maybe the rest will work out, too."

"Where are we headed?"

"There's an abandoned harbor not far from here; about four hours' run. A filer will meet us there." I started to ask another question, but my eye was too heavy to hold open. I closed it and the warm blanket of darkness folded in on me.

6.

Voices woke me. For a moment, I was back aboard Lord Desroy's yacht, lying on a heap of uncured Nith-hides, and the illusion was so strong that I felt a ghostly pang from the arm, broken and mended so long ago. Then Fsha-fsha's voice cut through the dream.

" . . . up now, Danger, have to walk a little way. How do you feel?"

I sat up and put my legs over the side of the cot and stood. "Like a drowned sailor," I said. "Let's go."

Up on the deck of the little surface cutter, I could see lights across the water. Fsha-fsha had put a heavy mackinaw across my shoulders. For the first time in a year, I felt cold. The engines idled back and we swung in beside a jetty. A small, furtive-looking Drathian was waiting beside a battered cargo-car. We climbed up into the box and settled down under some stiff tarpaulins, and a moment later the truck started up and pulled out in a whine of worn turbos.

I slept again. The habit of almost a year on the rafts, to sleep whenever I wasn't on the line, was too strong to break in an hour; and breathing the salt seas of Drath isn't the best treatment for human lungs. When I woke up this time, the car had stopped. Fsha-fsha put a hand on my arm and I lay quiet. Then he tapped me and we crawled out and slid down the tailgate, and I saw we were parked at the edge of the s.p.a.ceport at Drath City. The big dome loomed up under the black sky across the ramp, as faded and patched as ever; and between us and it, the clumsy bulk of an ancient cargo-carrier squatted on battered parking jacks.

Something moved in the shadows and a curiously shaped creature swathed in a long cloak came up to us. He flipped back the hood and I saw the leathery face of a Rishian.

"You're late," he said unhurriedly. "A couple of local gendarmes nosing about. Best we waste no time." He turned and moved off toward the freighter. Fsha-fsha and I followed. We had covered half the distance when an actinic-green floodlight speared out to etch us in light, and a rusty-hinge voice shouted the Drathian equivalent of "Halt or I'll shoot!"

7.

I ran for it. The Rishian, ten feet in the lead, spun, planted himself, brought up his arm and a vivid orange light winked. The spotlight flared and died, and I was past him, sprinting for the open cargo-port, still a hundred yards away across open pavement. A gun stuttered from off to the right, where the searchlight had been, and in the crisp yellow flashes I saw Drathian Rule-keepers bounding out to intercept us.

I altered course and charged the nearest Rule-keeper, hit him fair and square. As he fell, my fingers, which had learned to strip the carapace from a twelve-pound chzik with one stroke, found his throat and cartilage crumpled and popped and he went limp and I was back on my feet in time to see the other Drathian lunge for Fsha-fsha. I took him from behind, broke his neck with my forearm, lifted him and threw him ten feet from me. And we were running again.

The open port was just ahead, a brilliant rectangle against the dark swell of the hulk. Something gleamed red there, and Fsha-fsha threw himself sideways and a ravening spout of green fire lanced out and I went flat and rolled and saw a giant Drathian, his white serape thrown back across his shoulder, swinging a flare-muzzled gun around to cover me. I came to my feet and dove straight at him, but I knew I wouldn't make it- Something small and dark plunged from the open port, leaped to the Drathian's back. He twisted, struck down with the b.u.t.t of the gun, and I heard it thud on flesh. He struck again, and bone crunched, and the small, dark thing fell away, twisting on the pavement; and then I was on the Rule-keeper. I caught the gun muzzle, ripped it out of his hands, threw it away into the dark. His face was coming around to me, and I swung with all the power that the months of mule-labor had given my arm, and felt the h.o.r.n.y mask collapse, saw the ochre blood spatter; he went down and I stepped over him and the small, dark creature that had attacked him moved and the light from the entry fell across it and showed me the mangled body of a H'eeaq.

8.

Up above, a shrill Rishian voice was shouting. Behind me, I heard the thud of Drathian feet, their sharp, buzzing commands.

"Srat," I said, and could say no more. Thick, blackish blood welled from ghastly wounds. Broken rib-ends projected from the warty hide of his chest. One great goggle-eye was knocked from its socket. The other held on me.

"Master," the ugly voice croaked. "Greatly . . . my people wronged you. Yet-if my wounds . . . may atone for yours . . . forego your vengeance . . . for they are lonely . . . and afraid. . . ."

"Srat . . . I thought . . ."

"I fought the Man, Master," he gasped out. "But he was stronger . . . than I. . . ."

"Huvile!" I said. "He took the ship!"

Srat made a convulsive movement. He tried to speak, but only a moan came from his crocodile mouth.

I leaned closer.

"I die, Master," he said, "obedient . . . to your . . . desires. . . ."

CHAPTER TEN.

Fsha-fsha and a Rishian crewman hauled me aboard the ship; Srat's corpse was left on the ramp. Other species aren't as sentimental about such things as Man is. There were a few angry objections from Drath Traffic Control as we lifted, but the Drathians had long since given up Deep s.p.a.ce travel, and the loss of a couple of runaway slaves wasn't sufficient reason to alienate the Rishians. They were one of the few worlds that still sent tramps into Fringe s.p.a.ce.

Once away, Fsha-fsha told me all that had happened since I was sent to the rafts: "Once you'd planted the idea of escape, I had to go ahead with it," he said. "The next chance was three months later, two of us this time, just one overseer. I had a fancy plan worked out for decoying him into a side alley, but I had a freak piece of luck. It was a loading job, and a net broke and scattered cargo all over the wharf. The other slave got the whole load on his head-and a nice-sized iron casting clipped the guard and laid him out cold. He had the controllers strapped to his arm, in plain sight, but getting to them was the hardest thing I ever did in my life. I used a metal bar from the spilled cargo on them and fainted at the same time.

"I came out of it just in time. The Load-master and a couple of Rule-keepers were just arriving. I got up and ran for it. They wasted a little time discovering my controller was out of action, and by then I had a good start. I headed for a hideaway I'd staked out earlier, and laid up there until dark.

"That night I came out and took a chance on a drinking-house that was run by a non-Drathian. I thought maybe he'd have a little sympathy for a fellow alien. I was wrong, but I strapped him to the bed and filled both my stomachs with high-lipid food, enough to keep me going for two weeks, and took what cash he had in the place and got clear.

"With money to spend, things were a little easier. I found a dive where I could lie low, no questions asked, and sent out feelers for information on where you'd been sent. The next day the little guy showed up: Srat.

"He'd been hanging around, waiting for a chance to talk to someone from the Triarch's stable. I don't know what he'd been eating, but it wasn't much; and he slept in the street.

"I told him what I knew; between us, we got you located. Then the Rish ship showed up."

The Rishian captain was sitting with us, listening. He wrinkled his face at me.

"The H'eeaq, Srat, spoke to me in my own tongue, greatly to my astonishment. Long ago, at Rish, I'd heard the tale of the One-Eyed Man who'd bartered half of the light of his world for the lives of his fellows. The symmetry of the matter demanded that I give such a one the help he asked."

"The little guy didn't look like much," Fsha-fsha said. "But he had all the guts there were."

"You may take pleasure in the memory of that rarest of creatures," the Rishian said. "A loyal slave."

"He was something rarer than that," I said. "A friend."

2.

Fsha-fsha and I stayed with the freighter for three months; we left her on a world called Gloy. We could have ridden her all the way to Rish, but my destination was in the opposite direction: Zeridajh. Fsha-fsha stayed with me. One world was like another to him, he said. As for the ancestral Tree, having cut the ties, like a man recovered from an infatuation, he wasn't eager to retie them. The Rish captain paid us off for our services aboard his vessel-we had rebuilt his standby power section, as well as pulling regular shifts with the crew. That gave us enough cash to re-outfit ourselves with respectable clothes and take rooms at a decent inn near the port, while we looked for a Center-bound berth.

We had a long wait, but it could have been worse. There were shops and taverns and apartments built among the towering ruins of a vast city ten thousand years dead; but the ruins were overgrown and softened by time, so that the town seemed to be built among forested hills, unless you saw it from the air and realized that the mountains were vine-grown structures.

There was work for us on Gloy; by living frugally and saving what we earned, we acc.u.mulated enough for pa.s.senger berths inward to Tanix, a crossroads world where the volume of in-Galaxy shipping was more encouraging. After a few days' wait, we signed on a mile-long super-liner. It was a four months' cruise; at the end of it we stepped off on the soil of a busy trading planet, and looked up at the blaze of sky that meant Center was close.

"It's still three thousand lights run to Zeridajh," the Second Officer for Power told me as he paid me off. "Why not sign on for another cruise? Good powermen are hard to find; I can offer you a nice bonus."

"It's useless, Second," Fsha-fsha answered for me. "Danger is searching for a magic flower that only grows in one special garden, at the hub of the Galaxy."

After a couple of weeks of job-hunting, we signed on as sc.r.a.pers on a Center-bound tub crewed by small, damp dandies from the edge of Center. That was the only berth a highbrow Center skipper would consider handing a barbarian from what they called the Outworlds. It was a long cruise, and as far as I could tell, the jobs that fell to a sc.r.a.per on a Center ship were just as dirty as on any Outworld tub.

On our next cruise, we found ourselves stranded on a backwater world by a broken-down guidance system on the rotting hulk we had shipped in on. We waited for a berth outbound for a month, then took service under a local constabulary boss as mercenaries. We did a lot of jumping around the planet, marching in ragged jungle and eating inedible rations, and in the end barely got clear with our hides intact when the constabulary turned out to be a dacoit force. I made one interesting discovery; my sorting skill came in handy in using the bill-hook machetes issued to the troops. After one or two small run-ins, I had keyed-in a whole set of reflex responses that made me as good as the battalion champion.

Usually, though, we didn't see much of the planets we visited. It was normal practice, all across the Galaxy, for a world to channel all its s.p.a.ce-faring commerce and traffic through a single port, for economy of facilities and ease of control. The ports I saw were like ports in all times and climes: cities without personality, reduced to the lowest common denominator of the thousand breeds of being they served.

After that, we found another slot, and another after that, on a small, fast lugger from Thlinthor; and on that jump we had a change in luck.

3.

I was sound asleep in the off-watch cubbyhole I rated as a sc.r.a.per when the alarm sirens went off. It took me thirty seconds to roll out and get across the deck to the screens where Fsha-fsha and half a dozen other on-watch crewmen were gaping at a sight that you only see once in a lifetime in Deep s.p.a.ce: a derelict hulk, adrift among the stars. This one was vast-and you could tell at one glance that she was old. . . .

We were five hundred miles apart, closing on courses that were only slightly skew; that made two miracles. We hove-to ten miles from her and took a good look, while the power officer conferred with Command Deck. Then the word came through to resume course.

"Huh?" Both Fsha-fsha and I swiveled on him. From the instant I'd seen the hulk, visions of prize-money had been dancing in my head like sugarplums. "He's not going to salvage her?" Fsha-fsha came as close to yelling as his mild nature would let him.

The power officer gave him a fishy look from fishy eyes in a fishy face. Like the rest of the crew, he was an amphibian who slept in a tank of salty water for three hours at a stretch-and like all his tribe, he was an agoraphobe to the last feathery scale on his rudimentary rudder fin. "It ith not practical," he said coldly.

"That tub's fifty thousand years old if she's a day," Fsha-fsha protested. "And I'm a mud-puppy if she's not a Riv Surveyor! She'll be loaded with Pre-collapse star maps! There'll be data aboard her that's been lost since before Thlinthor lofted her first satellite!"

"How would you propoth that we acthelerate thuch a math as that to interthtellar velothity?" he put the question to us. "The hulk outweigth uth a million to one. Our engines were not dethigned for thuch threthes."

"She looks intact," I said. "Maybe her engines are still in working order."

"Tho?"

"We can put a prize crew aboard her and bring her in under her own power."

The Thlinthorian tucked his head down between his shoulder plates, his version of a shudder.

"We Thlinthorians have no tathte for thuch exthploiths," he said. "Our mithion is the thafe delivery of conthigned cargo-"

"You don't have to go out on the hull," Fsha-fsha said. "Danger and I will volunteer."

The power officer goggled his eyes at us and conferred with Command Deck. After a few minutes of talk word came through that his Excellency the Captain was agreeable.

"One stipulation," I said. "We'll do the dirty work; but we take a quarter-share between us."

The captain made a counter-offer of a twentieth share each. We compromised on a tenth.

"I don't like it," Fsha-fsha told me. "He gave in too easily."

We suited up and took a small boat across to the old ship. She was a glossy brown ovoid about half a mile in diameter. Matching up with her was like landing on a planetoid. We found a hatch and a set of outside controls that let us into a dusty, cavernous hold. From there we went on through pa.s.senger quarters, recreation areas, technical labs and program rooms. In what looked like an armory, Fsha-fsha and I looked over a treasure-house of sophisticated personal offense and defense devices. Everything was in perfect order; and nowhere, then or later, did we ever find a bone of her crew, or any hint of what had happened to her.

A call from the captain on the portable communicator reminded us sharply that we had a job to do.

We followed a pa.s.sage big enough to drive a moving van through, found the engine room, about the size of Grand Central Station. The generators ranged down the center of it were as ma.s.sive as four-story apartment buildings. I whistled when I saw them, but Fsha-fsha took it in stride.

"I've seen bigger," he said. "Let's check out the system."

It took us four hours to work out the meaning of the oversized controls ranged in a circular console around a swiveled chair the size of a bank vault. But the old power plant started up with as sweet a rumble as if it had been in use every day.

After a little experimental jockeying, I got the big hull aligned on course coordinates and fed the power to the generators. As soon as we were up to cruise velocity, His Excellency the Captain ordered us back aboard. "Who are you sending over to relieve us?" I asked him.

"You may leave that detail to my discrethion," he told me in a no-argument tone.

"I can't leave this power section unmanned," I said.

He bugged his eyes at me on the four-inch screen of the pocket communicator and repeated his order, louder, with quotations from the Universal Code.

"I don't like it," Fsha-fsha said. "But I'm afraid we haven't got much choice."

Back aboard the mother-ship, our reception was definitely cool. Word had gotten around that we'd pigged an extra share of the goodies. That suited me all right. The Thlinthorians weren't the kind who inspired much in the way of affection.

When we were well inside the Thlinthorian system the power officer called Fsha-fsha and me in and showed us what was probably a smile.

"I confeth I entertained a thertain thuthpithion of you both," he confided. "But now that we have arrived in the Home Thystem with our thuperb prize thafely in the thlave orbit, I thee that my cauthion was exthethive. Gentlemen, join me in a drink!"

We accepted the invitation, and he poured out nice-sized tumblers of wine. I was just reaching for mine when Fsha-fsha jostled the table and sloshed wine from the gla.s.ses. The power officer waved aside his apologies and turned to ring for a mess-boy to mop up the puddle. In the instant his back was turned, Fsha-fsha dropped a small pellet in our host's drink, where it dissolved instantly. We all sat smiling benignly at each other while the small Thlinthorian servant mopped up, then lifted our gla.s.ses and swallowed. Fsha-fsha gulped his down whole. I took a nice swallow of mine, nodded my appreciation and took another. Our host chugalugged and poured another round. We sipped this one; he watched us and we watched him. I saw his eyes wander to the time-scale on the wall. Fsha-fsha looked at it, too.

"How long does it take your stuff to work?" he inquired pleasantly of the Thlinthorian. The latter goggled his eyes, made small choking noises, then, in a strangled voice said: "A quarter of an hour."