Part 5

He sat. There were noises in the ship, but they were unfamiliar ones, the impersonal clangings and boomings of freight hatches, machinery, the invading boots and unknown voices of dockside men. The sounds of the port outside came to him muffled and subdued, like the ceaseless roll of thunder a long way off. There was a feeling of cessation. The voyage was over. Out there a new sun was shining, there was air unbreathed by any man of Earth and a whole wide world waiting, a Vardda world, his as much as theirs, but he was barred from it, he was kept under hatches like a criminal, unable even to speak while strangers decided his fate. It scared him, and it angered him, and the more he felt trapped and helpless the more furious he got. His body would not stay still. He sprang up and began to stride the floor, and Edri watched him speculatively.

"Get good and mad," he said. "You can't fight unless you're mad."

"I'll fight."

"You know the line to take. Don't be afraid to let 'em have it."

"I won't."

Time passed. Edri sat and smoked. Trehearne paced, sat down, and paced again. A year went by, and then another, and then a young man, very brisk, very efficient, very self-assured, came in and looked at them.

"You're to come to the Coordinator's office," he said, and stared with frank curiosity at Trehearne. Then he turned to Edri. "He _looks_ all right. Is this story really true?"

"Never mind," said Edri. "Come on, Trehearne."

He followed them, down the long corridor and into the lock chamber, leaving the ship as he had first entered it so long ago, so far away. He stepped out onto the open dock, and the full roaring, thundering impact of the biggest spaceport in the galaxy hit him like an explosion.

Row upon row, and on all sides, the towering docks stretched to the end of his seeing and beyond. Ships lay in most of them, recumbent monsters taking their ease, while men and machines in vast numbers and great complexity waited on their needs. The ringing air was heavy with smells, strange spices and subtle unidentifiable things mingling with the reek of oil and hot metal, cargoes of unimagined riches from unimaginable worlds. Trehearne stood, feeling the tremendous pulse beat through him, hardly aware for the moment that Edri was trying to steer him to a kiosk at the end of the dock, or that the young Vardda was amused at his wide-eyed astonishment.

In endless hordes, men swarmed upon the looming hulls and went busily along the docks, testing, checking, guiding and managing the machines. They were not Vardda men. They were men from the other worlds, who could not fly the stars. A lot of them--and here Trehearne's eyes opened even wider, because even though he had been told, seeing is another thing--were not at all what he would have called human. But in spite of their strangeness, they seemed familiar. They were like any of the cheerful, hard-handed, competent men to be seen around any port of Earth, serving the ships and the planes. The incessant noise was deafening. Gigantic cranes moved ponderously on their tracks, shifting cargoes between strings of carriers and the gaping holds. Small trams weaved in and out of the confusion. At intervals between the docks were lines of shops, where atomic-powered forges shaped new parts, new plates and housings. Here a crew worked on a hull with flaring welders, and there a great bow section was lowered slowly into place with an ear-shattering clang.

Edri's voice reached him, thin and faint. "Big business, Trehearne. The biggest in the galaxy. Impressive, isn't it?"

He urged Trehearne along, toward the kiosk that was still some way ahead. They walked in a railed-off path, and in a moment Trehearne saw coming toward them on the other side of the rail a large and very involved piece of machinery that seemed to be walking slowly the length of the ship's hull, guided by one small human attendant and bearing in its belly another one who sat surrounded by dials and counters and little screens.

"That's an X-ray scanner," Edri told him. "They get first crack at every ship that lands. These ultra-speeds have effects on metals in time. The scanners test the structure of the metals for crystallization, or any abnormal molecular shift. The ships become unsafe after a certain period of service--usually a fairly long one--and they're watched very closely. It's no fun having a hull fall apart on you in the middle of nowhere."

He pushed Trehearne on, into the kiosk. The young Vardda was still amused. Edri said, "There's a lift here. We go down."

Trehearne stepped in, and turned. Just before the door closed smoothly in his face, he caught a glimpse of a tall white pylon in the distance, dominating the whole field, and knew without being told that it housed Port Administration and his immediate destiny. Once more the sense of wonder was stripped away. The lift dropped and his heart dropped with it, swiftly down.

The trip was short. The lift set them in a passageway far underground, and the passageway led to a tube, all very quiet after the roaring of the port. A small monorail car took them in a handful of minutes to the levels underneath the pylon, and then there was another lift, a private one this time, going up. There was a bitter taste in Trehearne's mouth, and the palms of his hands were sweating.

He thought the lift would never stop, but it did, on the highest level. The brisk young man motioned them out, and there was an office, bare and spacious, with window walls that looked on all sides across the spaceport. Trehearne thought fleetingly that it was less like an office than the bridge of a starship, pathetically shackled to the soil.

Shairn was there, and Kerrel, standing far apart and very stiff, their faces set and stubborn. Kerrel did not turn, but Shairn came to Trehearne and took his hand defiantly. Off at one side a second brisk young man presided over some sort of a recording device. There seemed to be a good deal of silence in the place, brought on, perhaps, by the arrival of the lift, for no one was in a silent mood--least of all the man who faced them from the other side of a massive table. Trehearne saw a grizzled, heavy-shouldered giant who was never designed to occupy an office. The walls cramped him, even such walls as these, because they were bounded by horizons. His large scarred hands rested uneasily on the polished wood, impatient of the papers that were stacked there, and his eyes seemed better used to watching stars than men. Those eyes, pale blue as winter ice, sought out Trehearne and did not waver until they had cut from him every bit of knowledge to be had.

"I didn't believe it," Joris said, "but I can see now why you didn't like the idea of killing him. Too much like one of us. But damn it!--Kerrel, you of all people should have remembered the law. No non-Vardda personnel under any circumstances to board any craft designed for interstellar flight. What got into you?"

Before Kerrel could answer, Shairn spoke for him. "A certain squeamishness," she said, "and a doubt. I think he regrets them both, now. You see, Joris, there was a legal doubt. Looking at Trehearne, could you tell he was non-Vardda?"

"But you knew it...."

"Oh no," said Edri pointedly, "we didn't. We didn't know at all until he survived the take-off, and then he couldn't very well be classified as non-Vardda--could he, Joris?"

Joris moved his huge bulk uncomfortably. "A freak," he said. "A mongrel. You didn't do him any kindness to bring him here. Shairn, I get a feeling that you had a hand in this. In fact, knowing you...."

Shairn snapped, "What I do is my own business. And as for Michael, he's as good a Vardda as you are. You haven't answered my question yet. Will you let him stay in my custody until the Council meets?"

"No! And that's final."

"But Joris...."

"You're a trouble-maker, Shairn. You have been since the day you were born. But I'm damned if you'll make trouble for me!"

"And I thought you were my friend. Joris, you ought to remember...."

"I took orders from your father when I flew his ships, but you're not the man he was! And furthermore, I'm not working for you now, I'm working for the government. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly." She added, in a tone of admiration, "Anyway, you haven't forgotten how to roar."

Surprisingly, Joris laughed. "No," he said, "no more than you've learned manners." He glanced from Shairn to the stony-faced Kerrel, who was still standing like a ramrod and saying nothing--Trehearne gathered that he had already said everything he considered necessary--and then back to Edri and the Earthman. "I'll admit this is one hell of a queer mess, and I'm glad I don't have to decide the final outcome. As I see it, my duty now is to keep him in custody like any other undesirable, until the Council takes him off my hands." He looked hard at Shairn. "That's the law, and that's the way it's going to be."

Kerrel spoke at last. "Good. That's what I wanted to be sure of."

Joris glowered at him. "I'm considered fairly reliable in the performance of my office." He nodded to the brisk young man who had brought Trehearne and Edri from the ship. "Make out the usual interim commitment form for suspected persons under the Port Authority Code, Section C...."

Trehearne said, "Just a minute." He stepped forward until he was facing Joris across the table. "You have no authority to imprison me."

Joris stared at him. Then he shook his head irritably as though he thought his ears must be playing him tricks, and stared again. His jowls took on a tinge of red. Trehearne went on. The time had come to let his temper go, and he turned it loose of all restraint.

"Unless he is formally accused of a crime, no Vardda may be detained by anyone against his will. I have committed no crime, and I have not been accused of any."

It took Joris some time to recover his voice. When he did, it fairly rattled the windows. "You are _not_ a Vardda!"

"No? Think a minute. What is the one distinguishing quality of a Vardda that marks him as different from all other men?"

"All right, I'll answer that! By some freak or other you managed to survive the flight. But that doesn't change the fact that you're an Earthman, born and bred, and therefore not a Vardda!"

Trehearne's eyes had acquired a hard glitter. "Then suppose," he said, "that you imprison me--an Earthman who has crossed the galaxy from Sol to Aldebaran, and lived. That'll make quite an uproar, won't it? All the non-Vardda peoples will be much interested. So will the Orthist party. I don't doubt they'll spread the news all over the galaxy--_the Vardda have admitted that they're not the only ones who can fly interstellar space_!"

Shairn said, "That's it, Michael! Go it!" Edri had drawn back a little. His eyes were sober and intent. Kerrel spoke, and his voice was sharp. "You've had bad advice, Trehearne. That kind of talk won't help you."

Joris motioned him to silence. To Trehearne he said, "What do you know about the Orthist party?"

"Enough to know that they could make a great deal of trouble. Either I'm Vardda or I'm not. And if I'm not, I could be the start of a whole new movement. The first non-Vardda to fly the stars, the first crack in the monopoly."

Joris shook his head. "You can be put away so quickly and quietly that no one will ever hear of you."

"Good," said Trehearne. "Put me away. Put away all the officers of the ship. Put away all the passengers. Put away all the crew. That's a lot of people to keep quiet."

Shairn broke in triumphantly. "Yes, Joris! How are you going to silence me?"

"And," said Edri, "me."

Joris looked from one to the other and back again, his brows drawn angrily together. But he said nothing. Kerrel leaned over the table.

"Joris," he said, "do you understand? The man is trying to blackmail you with an open threat of treason."

"Yes," said Trehearne, "I am." His voice was suddenly very quiet, and he spoke straight to Joris. "When I made that flight and lived I won my right to the freedom of the stars. I won my right to fly deep space, and I will use any weapons I can get my hands on against any man who tries to keep me from it."

Then, for quite a long while, no one spoke.

"By God," said Joris slowly, "I take it back. There can't be any mongrel blood in you. Only a Vardda could have that kind of insolence." He got up and came round the table. "You, Shairn. In spite of your political views, you'll back him up in this?"

"I will. And it's probably the only real accomplishment the Orthists will ever make."

"And you, Edri?"

"All the way."

Kerrel swore. It was the first time Trehearne had ever heard him do it, and it was aimed directly at Shairn. "For God's sake, watch what you're saying! Joris, she doesn't mean it, and she won't do it. I know her feelings on the subject too well for that."

Shairn said, "Try me."

Joris had become very thoughtful. "You know," he said to Kerrel, "whether she does or not, there's a great deal of truth in what the Earthman says. Far too much, I'm afraid, to be overlooked."

"Bluff," said Kerrel. "Look here, Joris, if you turn this man loose, I'll have to report...."

"Oh, report and be damned! The law says I have to shut him up, and shut him up I will, and there my duty ends. And I don't need you to tell me my business." He went to the recorder, took out the spool, dropped it on the floor and crushed it under his boot. "Now clear out, all of you. Dismissed. And I'd advise you all to keep your mouths shut. Especially _you_," he said to the two very young men. "You have enough work to keep you busy. Go and do it. You stay here, Trehearne."

Trehearne stayed, and there was a bitter thought in him that he had failed. The faces of the others, as they left, were full of doubt. Presently he was alone with Joris in the sweep of golden light from the windows. From the eastern quadrant of the port Trehearne saw a great ship rise and clear away for distant suns.

Joris walked the floor, and said nothing. The silence was heavy, an oppressive thing. It was not touched by the sounds of the port, so far below. They were outside it, and the face of Joris was a heavy, sombre mask. Trehearne looked out at the alien sky, where the clouds burned like little nebulae, and then down again at the ships. From this vantage he could see the sector where the planetary craft came in, the slow freighters from the non-Vardda worlds of Aldebaran, and it came to him suddenly how the poor bastards that flew them must feel, watching the starships come and go and knowing they could never follow. Beyond the port the towers of the city rose, and Trehearne wondered if he would ever see it.

Joris stopped his pacing and said, "Come here."

Trehearne obeyed. The pale eyes, harsh and keen as an old eagle's, probed into him, weighing, judging. Trehearne stood and waited. He said nothing. There was nothing more to say.

"Vardda blood," Joris muttered to himself. "Unmistakable. And he wants to fly the stars." He asked abruptly, "Were you a foundling?"

"No," said Trehearne. And then he added slowly, "But I might just as well have been."

Joris turned away, his brows drawn and brooding, his head and shoulders massive against the background of burning sky. "How old are you?"

"Thirty-three, in Earth years."

Still with his back to Trehearne, Joris spoke. "I think I see a way. Whether it will work or not, I don't know. The Council convenes again in five days, at which time I'll be required to make my report on you, and I'll do what I can. Meanwhile, you'll have to go where I tell you and stay there without any fuss. Is that clear?"

"Yes." The pulse of hope had begun to beat again.

"Good. And Trehearne--"

"Yes?"

"If things turn out all right, you _will_ fly the stars!"

It was a threat as much as a promise.

Thirty minutes later, after a journey under guard in a sublevel tubecar that left him in complete ignorance of his whereabouts, Trehearne was conducted into a square neat cubicle, comfortable in all respects but none the less a prison cell. The magnetic lock clicked behind him and he was alone.

There were no windows. He did not even know whether he was above or below ground. There was neither day nor night nor time. He paced the narrow floor and ate the unfamiliar food delivered to him automatically through a slot in the wall, and tried to sleep. He smoked the last of his hoarded cigarettes and thought of Earth and the distances between the suns. He hoped and hope became gradually a grim despair.

No one came. Shairn had forgotten him. Edri's friendship had turned feeble at the last. The trap that Joris had set for him became more obvious with each passing hour. He hated them all. He raged and waited and remembered the old man's words--_You can be put away so quickly and quietly that no one will ever hear of you._

This was his landing on Llyrdis, the fruit of his journey across the star-shot universe. This was the end of his dream.

He ceased to rage.

There came a time when he awoke sharply from uneasy sleep to hear the low click of the lock and a soft slurred step on the floor, coming toward him. He sprang up, and saw that it was Shairn. She cried out, "_Michael!_" and her words came to him with a sound of unreality, like the voices heard through fever.

"It's all over, Michael--and you're free!"

NINE

An hour had gone by and he still could not quite believe it. He had left the cell behind him and the five eternal days of waiting. He stood on a terrace high above the city. It was night, and the burning moons were brilliant in the sky. The wind from the sea had the clean sting of wine, but it was not like the sea winds he remembered, it was new and strange, intensely thrilling. Around him the tall slim towers rose upward toward the moons, and far below the shining web of streets was a pattern of sensual beauty, many-colored, sounding, alive.

Shairn said softly, "Look at it, Michael. It's all yours."

He looked. His hands were tight on the terrace rail, and there was a fulness in him that made it hard to breathe.

"I had something to do with it, Michael. Aren't you going to thank me?"

He turned. She had put on a flowing thing of white, cunningly draped and spangled over with a diamond frost, and there were strange jewels caught in the dark masses of her hair. He started to speak and then forgot the words, when sounds from inside the apartment--it was Edri's--announced the arrival of Joris.

"Come now and hear how the miracle was done."

From the terrace they passed through sliding doors of glass, open now to the warm breeze, into a low, broad, spacious room of the utmost simplicity and comfort. A millionaire's room, Trehearne would have said, and yet Edri was a poor man by Vardda standards, owning no ships and working for those who did. The window walls looked out over the city, a mighty panorama of light and color that was without garishness, and inside there was quiet and homeliness, made personal by the small things Edri had brought home from his voyages. Robots of various sorts did all the cleaning automatically when he was away, and there was no kitchen. Meals arrived by pressure tube, fresh, hot, and to order, from a service center. Remembering his own bachelor quarters on Earth, Trehearne was overcome with envy.

Joris came toward him, holding out a huge hard hand. Trehearne shook it, and Joris said, "What were you thinking, those five days in the cell?"

Trehearne shook his head. "I won't tell you, since none of it was true."

Joris laughed. Edri said, "We haven't told him anything. We left that for you." He found glasses and poured wine. Joris settled heavily into a chair, full of an honest pride in his own cleverness, beaming with it. Shairn curled up near him on a wide couch and sipped her wine. "Go on," she said. "We're waiting."

"It took a lot of juggling," Joris said, "and more than a little downright forgery, but it worked. You see, Trehearne, a full record of all voyages is kept at Port Administration. I went back between thirty and forty years and managed to supply you with a pretty good background." He leaned forward. "You get this into your head, and keep it there. You were born on Earth thirty-four years ago of Vardda parents then engaged in trading activities on that planet. Your mother died in childbirth and your father was forced to abandon you, since even a Vardda infant cannot endure interstellar flight. The people who brought you up, and whom you had assumed to be your parents, merely fostered you." He paused, searching through his trouser pockets until he found a slip of paper, which he handed to Trehearne. "Here are the names of your real parents. Memorize them. Your father has since been killed in a wreck off Orion Nebula and you have no brothers or sisters. Incidentally, you have no inheritance either, since according to law your father's estate was divided upon his death. From now on, this is your only history. Don't forget it. And don't talk about any of it more than you're forced to."

Trehearne stared at the paper and the two names that were written there. "I didn't think it could be done--But what did Kerrel say about this? He surely didn't believe the story."

"He couldn't prove it wasn't so. And I produced such convincing records that the evidence was overwhelming." He laughed. "Matter of fact, I cut the ground right out from under him."

"He didn't like it," Shairn said. "But there was nothing he could do, and there never will be anything he can do. Joris and I managed to persuade the Council not to have you appear for questioning, Michael--on the very good grounds that the less said about it the better. The hearing was closed, with the news-services barred out. Joris' records, and your Vardda characteristics were sufficiently convincing. They passed their resolution in less than thirty minutes, and then followed it by another to tighten the laws against Vardda children being born on any world but Llyrdis!"

Trehearne put the piece of paper in his pocket. "There's a lot of things I want to say, but--" He broke off, and Edri shoved a glass in his hand. "Don't try," he said. "Just tell us honestly that we're wonderful, and we'll be satisfied. Incidentally, don't ever make me out a liar. I reported the most interesting statements from you concerning your unhappy childhood as a foundling."

Trehearne grinned. He looked from one to the other, and finally his gaze centered on Joris. "There's one thing I don't understand. Why did you do this for me?"

"Don't ever question a man's reasons, as long as they're good, Trehearne. And now you're a Vardda, stamped and sealed, you've got another problem ahead of you. You have to make a living. Do you still want to fly the stars?" He saw the look on Trehearne's face, and smiled. "I need a supercargo on my ship _Saarga_, outbound in two weeks for trade in the Hercules Cluster. Officers and crew fly on shares and it's a rich voyage. Even a supercargo should do well."

Edri said, "I ought to warn you, Trehearne. The Hercules run is one of the toughest in the galaxy."

"That's why it pays so well," said Joris. "Well?"

Before Trehearne could answer, Shairn laid her hand lazily on his shoulder and said, "Nonsense, Joris. He doesn't have to take on anything like that. I can find a better opening in my fleet and he won't starve until I do."

Trehearne's face tightened. He said quietly, "I seem to have heard, Shairn, that you're quite well off."

"Oh, quite! Thirty ships to Joris' two. My father was smart, and I was lucky enough to be his only heir. Oh, the devil with it--who wants to talk business! Come on, Michael, we'll show you the city."

"In a minute." Joris was looking at him with an odd expression, and Trehearne's mouth tightened another notch. He said, "When shall I report aboard the _Saarga_?"

Edri leaned over Shairn's shoulder and whispered, "I think you've got our Michael angry."