Part 8

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.