Part 9

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?"

Yann groaned and retched. "I'm sick."

"You'll be sicker." Trehearne got him by the hair of the head, standing carefully and watching for any sudden move, and dragged him half erect. "Sit up and talk like a man. Why did you undo all your good work? You could have let me die right there."

Yann shook his head. "You were blundering straight into the others. Somebody was going to save you, and I figured it might as well be me. If you had any suspicions you'd switch them to someone else. Make it easier next time." His mouth twisted into a parody of a grin. "It did."

Trehearne said, "You're a hell of a nice guy." His hand moved and light flickered on the crystal knife. Yann's eyes were drawn to it.

"This wasn't my idea," he said. "I was only doing a job. You don't have to kill me." He put an emphasis on the pronoun.

"I don't have to. It's whether I want to or not. Whose idea was it, Yann?"

"He was going to give me a ship," Yann muttered. "A ship of my own. Any man would do it for a price like that. You'd do it yourself, Trehearne. That's just common sense."

Trehearne said, "Who offered you the ship?"

"Kerrel. You go fight it out with him. I've got nothing against you, Trehearne. Kerrel explained to me that it wasn't murder to put you out of the way, but a service to the whole Vardda community, and this was the only way he could do it. But I'm not interested in politics. This was just a business deal for me. One life, one ship."

"Kerrel isn't rich. Where was he going to get hold of a ship to give away?"

"I guess he had a deal in mind. Maybe that depended, too, on your not coming back. I don't know. Anyway, I can prove it was Kerrel. Here, I've got the whole business in writing. I'm no fool. Agent of the Council or not, a man's a man...." Still talking, still scowling, Yann dug into his tunic pocket. An instant later, an instant too late, Trehearne realized that by no possibility would Kerrel ever put such things in writing. He moved, fast.

The shocker came out of Yann's pocket, the weapon he wouldn't carry openly because Kurat would be offended, the weapon he had not left behind in the compound. Trehearne hit him just before the business end, the prism, cleared the silk cloth of Yann's tunic. He hit him with both hands, and he hadn't exactly forgotten the hunting knife with the razor edge, but he didn't care now, he didn't want to be laid out stunned and senseless by the shock-beam so that Yann could have his ship and Kerrel could have Shairn and the hounds could have their bellies full of meat. He hit him hard and rolled him over and rolled over with him. The shocker went skittering away, hitting the wall with a sharp click. Trehearne scrambled frantically to get to his feet first, but he didn't need to hurry. Yann was not going to get up any more. The shining haft of the knife was standing out of Yann's chest. It rose and fell a couple of times, and then it stopped. There was not much blood around it.

Torin broke the silence. "Will you kill the other one, too?" He jerked his head toward the door. Beyond it in the clearing Kurat was bawling at his yapping hounds.

Trehearne thought. He thought rapidly and clearly, and that was odd because there was a sickness in his belly, and a kind of shaking on him. After a moment he said, "No. There's a better way."

He went and picked up the shocker that had belonged to Yann. Then he leaned over and took the slack of Yann's collar in his free hand and dragged him outside. He was very heavy, and his head lolled back against Trehearne's wrist.

Kurat turned and came toward the hut. There was a happy look on his face. He was a happy man. He had done a good job, for good pay. And then he saw Trehearne, and the shocker, and Yann lying on the ground where Trehearne had dropped him. Something queer and ludicrous happened to the face of Kurat.

Trehearne pointed. "There's a native hunter's knife in his heart. You killed him, Kurat. I saw you do it."

Kurat made a sound like something that has stepped into a snare and feels it closing. "I didn't. You lie, you know I...."

"You killed a Vardda," Trehearne said. "You were quarrelling over the wine, and you put the knife into him, so. That was wrong of you, Kurat. I don't think the other Vardda will like it. I would go away, if I were you. I would take my hounds and my family and go a long way off into the forest."

Kurat stared for a moment into Trehearne's eyes. Then he looked at Yann. Then he turned and shouted up his bleeding hounds, saying no word but shouting with a curious raw edge to his voice, and went with them into the forest, running.

He was, Trehearne thought, no fool. He knew what Vardda vengeance could be, and he knew what his word would be worth against a Vardda. He did not think the factory would see Kurat again for many years. And he was glad. Kurat's disappearance would save Trehearne many explanations. He did not want to tell to anyone now the truth of how and why Yann had died.

He did not want to talk about it except to one man.

FOURTEEN

Torin's parents came back into the clearing a few minutes later. The woman had three hounds leashed, all of them bleeding and one going on three legs. In his hand, by its loose scruff, the man carried the fourth one, dead. He flung it down at Torin's feet.

"There's your work," he said. "Two of the others will not hunt for days. We will go hungry because my son is a fool."

Then he saw Yann's body, and started back, looking swiftly at Trehearne.

"Kurat killed him," said Trehearne. "I'll take his body back to the ship. There will not be any trouble."

"I will help you," Torin said.

The man said nothing. He stood running his hard hands nervously up and down on his bare belly, a man oppressed by fate. The woman turned silently away to tie the hounds again. Trehearne took off his belt and pried two of the jewel stones out of it. They were not of the best, but to these people they were riches. He would have given them Yann's belt, which was more valuable, but he was afraid it would make them trouble when they tried to barter it. He put the two stones in the man's palm.

"Those will pay for your hounds. I'll leave word with the factor that they were not stolen. Just don't do anything till after the ship is gone." He lifted up Yann's body and laid it over his shoulder. "Come on, my friend Torin. Let's go."

He walked out across the clearing, and Torin came with him, pointing out the path. When they were out of hearing, he said to Trehearne, "I would like it if you could forgive my parents. To me they are good and kind, but they do not understand the Vardda."

"Perhaps they do," Trehearne said. "Better than you know."

It was morning when they reached the compound, a green morning oppressed with heat. Trehearne was ready to drop, and even the boy was weary. Yann had been a heavy burden, shared between them. But all the way he had talked of the great ship. He would accept no other gift but that, to see the ship, and he pleaded so that Trehearne had not the heart to refuse him. After all, it was little enough reward for what the boy had done.

"You will have to wait, though, perhaps a long while. I will have to do much talking, about _him_."

"I will wait," said Torin, smiling. "I have waited all my life."

It was the last great day of the trading and all the Vardda were inside the compound except one man who guarded the _Saarga_. The hatches were closed. Only the airlock port was open and the guard sat in front of it, yawning in the heat. He quit yawning when he saw Yann's body.

Things were a little confused for Trehearne for a while. He talked, and then he patiently endured the tongue-lashing the skipper gave him. It was a rough one, such as a man deserved who would go drinking with a comrade and pass out and let his comrade be killed by natives. But when it was over there was nothing to do but order Yann buried and go on with the last trading. Trehearne was glad that Rohan and Perri were too busy right now to ask questions. When it was all finished he found Torin and went with him to the airlock port and spoke to the guard.

"He helped me out there. Maybe he saved my life. I promised him a look around."

The guard looked doubtful. "It's against the rules. The Old Man would have my head if he found out."

"How can he find out? He's busy. Don't worry, I'll see the boy gets clear of the ship. You can look the other way."

The guard could not withstand Torin's hungry gaze. He was a family man, with sons of his own. "Well--all right. Only be sure you get the kid out again--fast!"

Trehearne saw to it. He showed Torin what he could, from the bridge to the generator rooms, and the boy trod softly as though he were in a holy place, touching, sighing, wondering. Trehearne was sorry he had brought him. It was pitiful to see all that longing that could never be fulfilled. He pressed upon Torin what few trinkets from other star-worlds he had in his own possession and then led him out from the ship and stood with the guard, watching the boy go slowly away across the field, looking back, always back, until he was lost behind the compound wall.

"Poor little beggar," said the guard. "Star-crazy, like all the rest of them. Well, he'll get over it."

"I suppose so," said Trehearne, and was glad that he would not see Torin again.

He found the doctor and had himself patched up, and after that he was busy checking lading. He was dead for sleep, and it seemed an eternity until, toward midnight, the cargo was all aboard and the hatches locked. The _Saarga_ lifted into the star-shot sky, and the acceleration built and built to the thrust of the humming generators.

Trehearne told Rohan and Perri that he was too played out to talk about what had happened, and tumbled into his bunk. He was almost instantly asleep--and almost as instantly awake again.

There was a screaming in the ship....

They found Torin lying beside the well that led up from the hold. He had made it that far. His skin was already darkened with the subcutaneous hemorrhage, his body twisted and writhing, his face almost unrecognizable. And he screamed and would not stop.

Trehearne held him and watched him die.

It seemed to take a long, long time. It was not a clean death. It was dissolution. Trehearne remembered his own torment and there was nothing he could do. The others watched also with sick white faces. In the end it was the guard who went to fetch a cloth to wrap the body in, and there were tears on his cheeks.

Trehearne laid Torin on the sheet. His flesh was not hard any more. He was no longer straight and well made. He was not even a dead boy. He was a rag, a shapelessness, an obscenity. It crossed Trehearne's mind how nearly he had come to dying that same death.

He got up. He returned to his cabin, stripped and scrubbed himself in a kind of frenzy. He kicked his sodden garments into the corridor for someone else to deal with. He could not touch them again. And all the time he heard Torin's voice crying, "Surely I am strong enough to go out and see the stars!"

They came a little later and told Trehearne that they had found where Torin had hidden himself under the wrappings of a bale, to be carried aboard with the cargo.

"It wasn't your fault," they told him. "There was no way you could have seen the boy."

Trehearne was not comforted.

They buried Torin in deep space, to drift forever among the Suns of Hercules. And Trehearne thought of a hut, of a man and a woman who were waiting for their son to come home. He wished that Torin had listened to the wisdom of his father.

The _Saarga_ tramped her way onward among the worlds of the Cluster. Time and events gave Trehearne other things to think about. He was a starman now, tested and hardened, a functioning part of his environment. His horizons were boundless and the stars had not lost their lustre. But somehow, even so, the first fine flush of glory was gone.

He remembered the bitterness of the woman who had said, "You are free and I am chained and my children after me forever." He remembered the countless young men who hungered, the eyes of children wide with dreams. Each time he saw the new-healed scars on his body he remembered the boy who had dressed those wounds and found the Vardda flesh no different from his own--a treachery too subtle for his understanding.

Over and over, when he slept, he held Torin in his arms and watched him die.

He told himself that it was all wasted pity. Whatever had been done to Orthis long ago was not his doing. Things were as they were and there was no help for it. He was one of the lucky ones and he should be content with that. Most of the time he was content. But now and again there would come the small sharp doubts, the creeping sense of guilt.