Corridor of the Suns

CHAPTER I

If the shadow trailing him was danger, Vance Evers wanted to know it now. He stood, the hand in his pocket clutching the sweaty hilt of his gun, and peered back along the street.

It was night, but the unpaved street was not dark. There was no artificial illumination, for Valloa was too backward and barbaric a world for that. But the jungles of that world are rich in crystalline outcrops, and the squat and oddly-architectured houses and shops and taverns were all built of shimmering crystal blocks, a fairy-like glass town flashing back the radiance of the River of Stars in the sky.

Evers felt desperately uncertain. There were many Valloan men and women in the street back there, going about their own affairs. Yet he could not shake off the conviction that one of them was following him. He felt suddenly too tired and numb to cope with another danger now — too crushed down by the weight of the past weeks, by the weight of the most perilous secret in the galaxy.

“Too far,” thought Evers. “The dark between the galaxies, the dark that universes drown in, and oh God, to go all that way and come back to this—”

A chime of intolerable sweetness sounded across the shimmering town. The men of Valloa make many things of crystal, and the music of their bells is famous. But the rising, tinkling chorus of carillons only clawed at Evers’ taut nerves.

He stood, backed against a glassy wall, his dishevelled blond hair and weary, copper-tanned face making him a stand-out among the white-skinned, flame-haired Valloans. He looked back for minutes, while the bells talked in sweet and complex chimings above his head.

Nothing. Yet he was still sure that someone had followed him almost from the time he had come into the town.

He had to go on. There was nothing else he could do. Out in their ship, which they had landed with such secrecy in the jungle, his two comrades were waiting — Straw hurt, and Lindeman near a physical breakdown. And he, Evers, was their one hope now.

He went on abruptly, down the dusty street between the fairy crystal houses, with the singing of the bells all about him and the great belt of light lying like a sword across the black sky. Valloa was a fringe world, on the very rim of the galaxy, and because of that its people forever saw the galaxy edge-on. and called it the River of Stars. And also because it was a fringe world, it had only lately been touched by galactic civilization, and its hunters and thieves and crystal-miners had not much altered their ancient ways. Only a brassy neon glare of limited extent far ahead of Evers proclaimed the whereabouts of the Galactic Federation spaceport and offices and schools.

Evers went that way. He knew very well how risky it was, but there was a man he knew, a man named Garrow who was in the scientific mission that had been sent to this fringe world. If he could find Garrow without letting himself be caught, he might be able to pass on the explosive secret that they three had brought back from the shores of infinity.

He had had to argue that out with Lindeman. before he left the Phoenix. Lindeman, his face drawn and yellow with fatigue so that he looked like a starved marmoset, had been against it.

“We know that the Galactic Control all over the galaxy will be on the lookout for us,” he had said. “And Schuyler’s agents.”

“Which means,” Evers had pointed out, “that we’ve got to get word up to the top brass at Earth, before we dare come out in the open. Garrow can do it, if I can contact him.”

And so he had left them in the ship in the jungle, and had trudged into the crystal town, and that big “if” was coming up fast now.

Again, Evers looked back uneasily. There were fewer people in the street now, as he approached the edge of the Valloan town and the limits of the Federation area. The only near one was a Valloan girl with hair like a torch, sauntering along with her hips wiggling in her skin-tight silken pants, pure provocation to all male eyes that might be watching. He could see no one else within a block, and he decided that he was starting at shadows.

He went beyond the last crystal house, and the glaring lighted buildings and starport of the compound rose up ahead of him. And over the crystal chiming, a harsh voice spoke suddenly behind him.

“Just a minute, mister — do I know you?”

It was an Earthman’s voice, and it had Galactic Control in every timbre of it. Evers swung around frantically, his fist balled.

The GC patrolman who had spoken from the deep doorway was too fast for him. He leaped back, and his energy-gun was in his hand as he finished the movement.

“Thought so,” he said with satisfaction. “Know every Earthman on Valloa. We’ll just have a look at your ident—”

His voice trailed off. He looked at Evers’ coppery, sweating face, illumined by the soft radiance of the River of Stars. And the patrolman suddenly stiffened.

“Just hold still, mister,” he said, his voice now low and even. “I wouldn’t move if I were you.”

The gun in his hand still covered Evers. The patrolman fished a little plastic gadget out of his pocket, with the other hand. He touched it, and a pinpoint of light shone from it. He stared into it, holding it up so that his view would also include Evers.

Evers knew very well what it was. A micro-film file with its own magnifier. Every GC patrolman carried one, and in it would be—

“Vance Evers!” The patrolman spoke the name with excitement that had a touch of awe in it. His gun came up a trifle higher. “So you’re one of the—” He broke off, then asked swiftly, “Where are the others?”

“The others?” said Evers. He felt a fierce rage and disappointment, and he knew that he was going to do a fool thing. He knew he would try to jump the patrolman and he knew he would fail.

“Eric Lindeman, John Straw,” rapped the patrolman. “Don’t try to dummy up. Evers. It’s all in the micro-bulletin with your pictures. Wanted for violation of Galactic Council directives and—”

Evers saw something move behind the man. It was a small hand, flat and edge-on, that flashed up and struck the back of the patrolman’s neck.

The GC man’s eyes suddenly widened and filmed. His mouth opened ludicrously, and he toppled swiftly forward, stunned.

Evers looked over his fallen form at the red-haired Valloan girl. She had come up behind the patrolman quite silently on her bare feet. He gawked at her, and her green eyes flashed at him impatiently.

“Do you want to be taken?” she demanded. Her hand grabbed his wrist. “All right, come on then.”

Evers was tugged along by her, around the corner and then in a half-run down a narrow alley between the close-clustered crystal houses, before he found his voice.

“Why the devil would you—”

She turned swiftly and faced him. “I hate police. Earthman. It’s reason enough. But if you’d rather I hadn’t interfered, all right!”

Evers, his brain beginning to work, thought that she was probably telling the truth about her hatred of police. Valloans were a race to whom the profession of thief was hereditary and respected.

Over the ringing sweetness of the chimes that filled the air cut the harsh shrillness of a siren whistle. Instantly, Evers was reminded of the desperate nature of his situation. He had failed to reach Garrow, and the attempt must be given over for now. He had to get back to the hidden ship and wait for another chance.

The Valloan girl seemed to read his face, for she turned and ran up a stairway that broke the crystal facade beside them. “This way!”

Evers ran after her, his boots slipping clumsily on the worn crystal steps. The girl ahead of him was not wiggling and bouncing now — her long legs moved like an antelope’s. Drugged with fatigue as he was, Evers was panting when they reached the roof.

Under the radiance of the cataract of suns that belted the sky, stretched a bewildering labyrinth of glittering roofs. The chiming of crystal bells was overpoweringly loud up here, coming from all directions but loudest from just ahead. Then he saw, on the next flat roof, the old Valloan man who squatted before his double row of queer conical crystal bells, tapping them with his little hammers, adding his own peculiar chiming rhythm to the ringing confusion that throbbed through the night. Mentally, Evers damned the Valloan fondness for their queer music that kept some of them on the roofs half the night.

“It’s all right, old Oriden never sees anything when he’s at his bells,” said the girl. “We’d better hurry.”

Evers thought they had better. More whistles had joined the first, back toward the Federation compound. He went across the roofs with the girl and didn’t ask where it was they went.

She ducked down a stairway in the middle of the roof, and he followed her down into a corridor that was almost totally dark. He felt glad to be out of the full impact of those chimes.

She opened a door, and he followed her through into a room equally dark. The door closed, and then Evers uttered a little exclamation, his eyes wincing. She had suddenly struck fire to a lamp, and he was momentarily dazzled. The soft little flame of the lamp was reflected brilliantly from the faceted crystal walls and floor and ceiling.

“How you people can stand all this crystal—,” he began, and then stopped. He looked at her suspiciously. “What’s this place? And who are you?”

“I’m Sharr,” she said. “And it’s my place. And you’re safe here — for a while.”

Evers looked around, and thought that it was a hell of a thing that his great dream, the great thing that he and Straw and Lindeman had done — should have led him only to this — a backwater fringe-planet and a poorly furnished room of crystal, and a Valloan girl with red hair and a sexy shape, who stood and inspected him with curious green eyes.

“You didn’t stick your neck out just because you hate police,” Evers told her. “Why did you?”

She shrugged her bare shoulders. “Earthmen are rich. Everyone knows that. One would pay well, I thought, to escape arrest.”

Evers ran his hand wearily over his face, and told her, “I’ve got a few credits on me, but not too many. But I’ll have more later, and—”

He stopped. Sharr wasn’t listening to him. She was looking past him, at the door behind him, and her green eyes were wide with fear, her mouth falling open.

Evers spun around instantly, his hand frantically scooping in his pocket for his weapon.

There was nobody at all behind him.

He heard a hand whizz through the air but he couldn’t turn back in time. A stunning blow hit the nerve-centers in his neck, and skyrockets went off gloriously inside his head.

He woke, how much later he did not know, with a filthy headache. It was some minutes before he became conscious of anything but the pounding of his head. When he did, it was to find his face against the smooth crystal floor.

Evers began to remember. Raging, he tried to scramble up, and discovered at once that his wrists were tightly bound behind him.

He rolled over. The girl Sharr sat in a low chair three feet away, one silk-clad leg crossed over the other, smiling down at him with happy eyes.

“Did you think I didn’t know who you are?” she said. “Why do you suppose I followed you, and risked snatching you away from that GC man? A fortune — and you walk right into my hands!”

“You’re out of your mind,” Evers said thickly. “I told you how much I have.”

Sharr laughed. “It’s not how much you have, but how much you’ll bring. You’re Vance Evers. One of the men who went to Andromeda Galaxy.”