"It must be here." Ryzk had brought us out of hyper in a very old system where the sun was an almost-dead red dwarf, the planets orbiting around it black and burned-out cinders. He indicated a small asteroid. "There is a defense shield up there. And I don't see how you are going to break through that. They must have an entrance code and anything not answering that and getting within range—" He snapped his fingers in a significant gesture of instantaneous extinction.
Zilwrich studied what showed on the small relay visa-screen we had set up in his cabin. He leaned against the back rest we had improvised, his inert head frill crumpled about his neck. But though he appeared very weak, his eye was bright, and I think that the interest in the unusual which motivated his race made him forget his wounds now.
"If I only had my equipment!" He spoke Basic with the hissing intonation of his species. "Somehow I do not believe that is a true asteroid."
"It may be a Forerunner space station. But knowing that is not going to get us in undetected," rasped Ryzk.
"We cannot all go in," I said. "We play the same game over. Eet and I shall take in the LB."
"Blasting through screens?" scoffed Ryzk. "I tell you, our detect picked up emanations as strong as any on a defensive Patrol outpost. You'd be lasered out of existence quicker than one could pinch out an angk bug!"
"Suppose one dogged in a ship which did have the pass code," I suggested. "The LB is small enough not to enlarge the warn beep of such a one—"
"And when are you going to pick up a ship to dog in?" Ryzk wanted to know. "We might hang here for days—"
"I think not," Eet cut in. "If this is truly Waystar, then there will be traffic, enough to cut down days of waiting. You are the pilot. Tell us if this could be done—could the LB ride in behind another ship in that way?"
It secretly surprised me that there were some things Eet did not know. Ryzk scowled, his usual prelude to concentrated thought.
"I could rig a distort combined with a weak traction beam. Cut off the power when that connected with another ship. You'd have this in your favor—those defenses may only be set for big stuff. They'd expect the Fleet to burn them out, not a one-man operation. Or they might detect and let you through. Then you'd find a welcome-guard waiting, which would probably be worse than being lasered out at first contact."
He seemed determined to paint the future as black as possible. I had only what I had learned of the zero stone to support me against the very unpleasant possibilities ahead. Yet the confidence my experiment had bred in me wavered only in the slightest degree.
In the end, Ryzk turned his Free Trader's ingenuity to more work on the LB, giving it what defenses he could devise. We could not fight, but we were now provided with distorters which would permit us to approach the blot our ship's radar told us was Waystar, and then wait for the slim chance of making a run into the enemies' most securely guarded fortress.
Meanwhile, the Wendwind set down on the moon of the nearest dead planet, a ball of creviced rock so bleak and black that it should afford a good hiding place. And the co-ordinates of that temporary landing site were fed into the computer of the LB to home us if and when we left the pirate station—though Ryzk was certain we would never be back and said so frankly, demanding at last that I make a ship recording releasing him from contract and responsibility after an agreed-upon length of time. This I did, Zilwrich acting as witness.
All this did not tend to make me set about the next part of our venture with a great belief in success. I kept feeling the lump of the zero stone as a kind of talisman against all that could go wrong, too long a list of possible disasters to count.
Eet made a firm statement as we prepared our disguise.
"I choose my own form!" he said in a manner I dared not question.
We were in my cabin, for I had no wish to share the secret of the zero stone with either Ryzk or the Zacathan—though what they might think of our disguises I could not tell.
But Eet's demand was fair enough. I took the dull, apparently lifeless gem and laid it on the table between us. My own change was already thought out. But in case I needed a reminder on some details, I had something else, a vividly clear tri-dee of my father. He had never willingly allowed such to be taken, but this had belonged to my foster mother and had been the one thing I had taken, besides the zero stone, from my home when his death closed its doors to me. Why I had done so I could not have said—unless there was buried deep inside me a fragment of true esper talent, that of precognition. I had not looked at the tri-dee since the day I had lifted from that planet. Now, studying it carefully, I was very glad I had it. The face I remembered had, as usual, been hazed by time, and I found memory differed from this more exact record.
Warned by the fury of heat in the stone when I had used it on Eet, I touched it now with some care, my attention centering on the tri-dee, concentrating on the face appearing therein. I was only dimly aware that Eet crouched on the table, a clawed hand-paw joining mine in touching the jewel.
I could not be sure of the change in my outward appearance. I felt no different. But after an interval I glanced at the mirror ready for the necessary check, and indeed saw a strange face there. It was my father, yes, but in a subtle way younger than I remembered him last. But then I was using as my guide a picture taken planet years before I knew him, when he had first wed my foster mother.
There could certainly be no mistaking his sharp, almost harsh features by anyone who had ever known him. And I hoped that Eet could help me carry out the rest of the deception by mind reading and supplying me with the memories necessary to make me a passable counterfeit of a man known in Guild circles.
Eet—what had been his choice of disguise? I fully expected something such as the pookha or the reptilian form he had taken on Lylestane. But this I did not foresee. For it was no animal sitting cross-legged on the table, but a humanoid perhaps as large as a human child of five or six years.
The skin was not smooth, but covered with a short plushy fur, much like that of the pookha. On the top of the head this grew longer, into a pointed crest. Only the palms of the hands were bare of the fur, which in color was an inky black, and the skin bared there was red, as were the eyes, large and bulging a little from their sockets, the red broken only by vertical pupils. The nose had a narrow ridge of fur up and down it, giving a greater prominence to that feature. But the mouth showed only very narrow slits of lips and those as black as the fur about them.
To my knowledge I had neither seen nor heard described such a creature, and why Eet had chosen to assume this form first intrigued and then bothered me. Space-rovers were addicted to pets and one met with many oddities accompanying their masters. But this was no pet, unusual as it looked. It had the aura of an intelligent life form, one which could be termed "man."
"Just so." Eet gave his old form of agreement. "But I think you will discover that this pirate hold will have varied life forms aboard. And also this body has possibilities which may be an aid in future difficulties."
"What are you?" curiosity made me ask.
"You have no name for me," Eet returned. "This is a life form which I believe long gone from space."
He ran his red-palmed hands over his furred sides, absent-mindedly scratching his slightly protrudent middle. "You, yourselves, admit you are late-comers to the stars. Let it suffice that this is an adequate body for my present need."
I hoped Eet was right, as there was no use in arguing with him. Now I saw something else. That hand not occupied with methodical hide-scratching hovered near the zero stone—though if Eet was preparing to snatch that treasure I did not see where, in his present unclothed state, he would stow it. However, my fingers closed promptly on the gem and sealed it back in my belt. Eet was apparently not concerned, for his straying hand dropped back on his knee.
We bade good-by to Ryzk and the Zacathan. And I did not miss that Zilwrich watched Eet with an attention which might have been rooted in puzzlement but which grew into a subdued excitement, as if he recognized in that black-furred body something he knew.
Ryzk stared at us. "How long can you keep that on?" It was plain that he thought our appearances the result of some plasta change. But how he could have believed we carried such elaborate equipment with us I did not know.
"As long as necessary," I assured him and we went to board the greatly altered LB.
As we took off, forcibly ejected from the parent ship by the original escape method, we aimed in the general direction of the pirate station. But Ryzk's modifications allowed us to hover in space, waiting a guide. And it was Eet in his new form who took over the controls.
How long we would have to patrol was the question. Waiting in any form is far more wearisome than any action. We spent the slowly dragging time in silence. I was trying to recall every small scrap of what my father had said about his days with the Guild. And what lay in Eet's mind I would not have tried to guess. In fact, I was far too occupied with the thought that my father had been remarkably reticent about his Guild activities and that there might be as many pitfalls ahead as those pocking the dead moon, with only hair-thick bridges spanning them.
But our silence was broken at last by a clatter from the control board and I knew our radar had picked up a moving object. The tiny visa-screen gave us a ship heading purposefully for the station. Eet glanced over his shoulder and I thought he was looking at me for orders. The mutant was not accustomed, once a matter had been decided, to wait for permission or agreement. I found myself nodding my head, and his fingers made the necessary adjustments to bring us behind that other ship, a little under its bulk where we might apply that weak traction beam without being sighted, or so we hoped.
The size of the newcomer was in our favor. I had expected something such as a scout ship, or certainly not larger than the smallest Free Trader. But this was a bulk-cargo vessel, of the smallest class, to be sure, but still of a size to be considered only a wallowing second-rate transfer ship.
Our traction beam centered and held, drawing us under the belly of the bigger vessel, which overhung us, if anyone had been out in space to see, as a covering shadow. We waited tensely for some sign that those in the other ship might be alarmed. But as long moments slipped by we breathed more freely, reassured by so much, though it was very little.
However, on the visa-screen what we picked up now was not the ship, but what lay ahead. For additional safety Eet had snapped on the distort beam and through that we could see just a little of the amazing port we neared.
Whatever formed its original core—an asteroid, a moon, an ancient space station—could not be distinguished now. What remained was a mass of ships, derelicts declared so by their broken sides, their general decrepit appearances. They were massed, jammed tightly together into an irregular ovoid except in one place directly before us, where there was a dark gap, into which the ship controlling our path was now headed.
"Looted ships—" I hazarded, ready to believe now in every wild story of Waystar. Pirates had dragged in victim ships to help form their hiding place—though why any such labor was necessary I could not guess. Then I saw—and felt—the faint vibration of a defense screen. The LB shuddered but it did not break linkage with the ship. Then we were through without any attack.
As the wall of those crumpled and broken ships funneled about us, I foresaw a new danger, that we might be scraped or caught by the wreckage, for that space down which we were being towed narrowed the farther we advanced.
Also, though the ships had seemed tightly massed at first sight, this proved not to be so upon closer inspection. There were evidences that they had been intended as an enveloping cover for whatever core lay at the heart. There were girders and patches of skin welded together, anchoring one wreck to another. But it was a loose unity and there were spaces in between, some large enough to hold the LB.
Seeing those, and calculating that we might come to grief ahead were the passage to narrow to the point where only the cargo ship might wedge through, I decided one gamble was better than another.
"Wedge in here"—I made this more a suggestion than an order—"then suit up and go through?"
"Perhaps that is best," Eet answered. However, I suddenly remembered that though I might suit up, there was no protective covering on board which would take Eet's smaller body.
"The disaster bag," Eet reminded me as his hands moved to loose our tie with the bulk of ship overhead.
Of course, the baglike covering intended to serve a seriously injured escapee using the LB, one whose hurt body could not be suited up if the emergency landing had been made on a planet with a hostile atmosphere and it was necessary to leave the boat. I unstrapped, and opened the cupboard where the suit lay at full length. The disaster bag was in tight folds beside its booted feet. Passage in that would leave Eet helpless, wholly dependent on me, but there was hope it would not be for long.
He was busy at the controls, turning the nose of the LB to the left, pointing it into one of those hollows in the mass of wreckage. The impetus left us by the pull of the ship sufficed to give us forward movement, and two girders welded just above the hole we had chosen held the pieces of wreckage forming its walls steady. There was a bump as we scraped in, and another, moments later, as the nose of the LB rammed against some obstacle. We could only hope that the crevice had swallowed us entirely and that our tail was not sticking betrayingly into the ship passage.
I suited up as fast as I could, wanting to make sure of that fact—though what we could do to remedy matters if that had happened I did not have the slightest idea. Then I hauled out the disaster bag and Eet climbed in so that I could make the various sealings tight and inflate its air supply. Since it was made for a man he had ample room, in fact moved about in it in the manner of one swimming in a very limited pool, for there was no gravity in this place and we were in free fall.
Activating the exit port, I crawled out with great care, fearing more than I wanted to admit some raw edge which could pierce the protecting fabric of the suit or Eet's bag. But there was space enough to wriggle down the length of the LB, mostly by feel, for I dared not flash a beamer here.
Fortune had served us so far. The tail of the LB was well within the hole. And I had to hitch and pull, the weight of Eet dragging me back, by grasping one piece of wreckage and then the next for several lengths until I was in the main passage.
There was a weak light here, though I could not see its source, enough to take me from one handhold to the next, boring into the unknown. I made that journey with what speed I could, always haunted by the fear that another ship might be coming in or going out and I would be caught and ground against the wreckage.
The band of murdered ships ended suddenly in a clear space, a space which held other ships—three I could see. One was the cargo ship which had brought us in, another was one of those needle-nosed, deadly raiders I had seen used by the Guild, and the third was plainly a yacht. They were in orbit around what was the core of this whole amazing world in space. And it was a station, oval in shape like the protecting mass of wreckage, with landing stages at either end. Its covering was opaque, but with a crystalline look to the outer surface, which was pitted and pocked and had obviously been mended time and time again with substances that did not match the original material.
The cargo ship had opened a hatch and swung out a robo-carrier, heavily laden. I held on to my last anchorage and watched the robo spurt into a landing on a stage. The top half carrying the cargo dropped off and moved into an open hatch of the station while the robo took off for another load. There was no suited overseer to be seen, just robos. And I thought I saw a chance to make use of them to reach the station, just as we had used the robos to leave the caravansary.
Only I was not to have an opportunity to try. Out of nowhere came a beam, the force of which plastered me as tightly to the wreckage at my back as if my suit had indeed been welded in eternal bondage.
There was no breaking that hold. And my captors were very tardy about coming to collect me, finally spurting from the hatch of the yacht on a mini air sled. They lashed me into a tangle cord and used it as a drag to pull me behind them, not back to the ship from which they had issued, but to the landing stage where the robo had set down. Then, dismounting from their narrow craft, they tugged us both through a lock and into the interior of the station, where a weak gravity brought my boots and Eet's relaxed body to the floor.
Those who had taken me prisoner were humanoid, perhaps even of Terran breed, for they had that look. They snapped up their helmets and one did the same for me, letting in breathable air, though it had that peculiar faint odor of reprocessed oxygen. Leaving the tangle about my arms, they loosed me enough to walk, pointing with a laser to enforce my going. One of them took the bag from me and towed Eet, turning now and then to study the mutant narrowly.
So it was as prisoners that we came to the legendary Waystar, and it was an amazing place. The center was open, a diffused light filling it, a greenish light which gave an unpleasant sheen to most of the faces passing. By some unknown means there was a light gravity giving a true up and down to the corridors and balconies opening on that center. I caught sight of what could be labs, passed other doors tightly shut. There was population enough to equal that of a village on an ordinary planet—though, as I guessed, those who used the station as home base were often in space and the permanent dwellers were limited in number.
It was one of the latter I was taken before. He was an Orbsleon, his barrel bulk immersed in a bowl chair with the pink fluid he needed for constant nourishment washing about his wrinkled shoulders, his boneless upper tentacles floating just beneath its surface. His head was very broad in the lower part, dwindling toward a top in which two eyes were set far apart, well to the sides. His far-off ancestor of the squid clan was still recognizable in this descendant. But that alien body housed a very shrewd and keen intelligence. A Veep in Waystar would be a Veep indeed, no matter what form of body held him.
A tentacle tip flashed from the bowl chair to trigger keys on a Basic talker, for the Orbsleon was a tactile communicator.
"You are who?"
"Hywel Jern." I gave him an answer as terse as his question.
Whether that name meant anything to him I had no way of knowing. And I received no aid from Eet. For the first time I doubted that the mutant could carry some of the burden of my impersonation. It might well be that the alien thought process would prove, in some cases, beyond his reading. Then I would be in danger. Was this such a time?
"You came—how?" The tentacle tip played out that question.
"On a one-man ship. I crashed on a moon—took an LB—" I had my story ready. I could only hope it sounded plausible.
"How through?" There was of course no readable expression on the alien's face.
"I saw a cargo ship coming in, hung under it. The LB played out halfway through the passage. Had to suit up and come along—"
"Why come?"
"I am a hunted man. I was Veep Estampha's value expert, I thought to buy out, live in peace. But the Patrol were after me. They sent a man on contract when they could not take me legally. He left me for dead. I have been on the run ever since." So thin a tale it might hold only if I were recognized as Hywel Jern. Now that I was well into this I realized more and more my utter folly.
Suddenly Eet spoke to me. "They have sent for one who knew Jern. Also they did not register 'dead' when you gave your name."
"What do here?" my questioner went on.
"I am an appraiser. There is perhaps need for one here. Also—this is the one place the Patrol is not likely to take me." I kept as bold a front as I could.
A man came in at the slow and rather stately pace the low gravity required. To my knowledge I had not seen him before. He was one of the mutants of Terran stock having the colorless white hair and goggle-protected eyes of a Faltharian. Those goggles made his expression hard to read. But Eet was ready.
"He did not know your father well, but had seen him several times in Veep Estampha's quarters. Once he brought him a Forerunner piece, a plaque of iridium set with bes rock. Your father quoted him a price of three hundred credits but he did not want to sell."
"I know you," I said swiftly as Eet's mind read that for me. "You had a piece of Forerunner loot—iridium with bes setting—"
"That is the truth." He spoke Basic with a faint lisp. "I sold it to you."
"Not so! I offered three hundred, you thought you could do better. Did you?"
He did not answer me. Rather his goggled head swung toward the Orbsleon. "He looks like Hywel Jern, he knows what Jern would know."
"Something—you do not like?" queried the tentacles on the keys.
"He is younger—"
I managed what I hoped would register as a superior smile. "A man on the run may not have time or credits enough for a plasta face change, but he can take rejub tablets."
The Faltharian did not reply at once. I wished I could see the whole of his face without those masking goggles. Then, almost reluctantly, he did answer.
"It could be so."
During all those moments the Orbsleon's gaze had held on me. I did not see his small eyes blink; perhaps they did not. Then he played the keys of the talker again.
"You appraiser, maybe use. Stay."
With that, not sure whether I was a prisoner or perhaps now an employee, I was marched out of the room and led to a cubby on a lower level, where Eet and I, having been searched for weapons and had the suit and bag taken from us, were left alone. I tried the door and was not surprised to find it sealed. We were prisoners, but to what degree I could not be sure.