Fugitive of the Stars

CHAPTER III

They made a good try at fighting their way out. Horne clearly remembered afterward that they had gotten to the middle of the street and that he had personally broken one man's jaw. He remembered that Vinson had an unexpectedly powerful left. And then something hit him from behind, a board or a bottle or a stone, and when he came round again they were all alone in the street and Vinson was trying to help him up.

No. Not Vinson. Someone else.

He saw the face close above him in the blue light, a Skereth face, clean-cut and intelligent and unmarked, with dark concerned eyes. “Are you all right?"

Horne clawed his way up the young man's arm, looking around for Vinson.

"Vinson,” he said. He stood up, hanging on to the stranger. He shouted, “Vinson!"

"There's no one here, no one but you.

"Vinson!” Horne shouted again, and went staggering away.

The young man caught him. “Hush! Listen."

Horne listened, his head clearing, his body still cold and wooden, a kernel of nausea growing from a pain that seemed to be centered just behind his left ear. He heard the sounds then, the quiet, vicious sounds of men savaging a victim, the grunts of effort and the guttural, excited breathing. They came from somewhere… Where?

"In there,” said the young man, pointing to a narrow alley so shadowed by the buildings that it had escaped Horne's notice. The young man began to run and Horne ran after him, stiffly, stumbling over the curbstones.

As he went, the young man whistled, a sharp, shrill, long-carrying note.

The men who were in the alley, busy in the darkness with particular intense business, heard the whistle and froze, startled in various attitudes above the light-colored heap that lay quietly moaning under their feet.

A tremendous anger came over Horne so that he forgot the pain in his head, and the cold woodenness was burned out of him. His eyesight became strangely acute. He saw the young man running close ahead of him and noticed for the first time that he wore spaceman's garb. He saw the men who were standing above Vinson come loose from their startlement and begin to move again. He saw the stranger plow into them and then he was plowing in too, his fists hammering hard against flesh, hard with a simple desire to destroy. At the same time, in the street behind him, he heard sounds of voices and running feet.

The young stranger fought beside him, shoulder to shoulder, standing over Vinson's moaning.

The two of them would not have stood long, no longer than he and Vinson had stood before against the great outnumbering of men that faced them. But the whistle had brought other men, men in spaceman's boots and caps. They shouted, and the young man shouted back, “In here!” They came boiling down the alley full of blood-lusting exuberance, and in a few minutes there was nobody left there but Horne and Vinson and the young stranger and the newcomers with the spaceman's caps. The others had all run away.

The young man told somebody to call an ambulance. Then he kneeled down beside Horne who was holding Vinson's head in his lap.

Vinson said, “I think I made a mistake. I shouldn't have hit him."

"It wouldn't have mattered,” Horne said. “How bad is it?"

"I don't really know,” said Vinson and fainted. Horne looked across at the young man.

"Thanks,” he said.

"I'm sorry I didn't happen along earlier. My name's Ardric."

"Jim Horne."

They shook hands over Vinson's heavily-breathing body.

"I'm sorry,” said Ardric. “I'm ashamed for my people, for Skereth. There's a lot of feeling about this business of joining the Federation. Some of it's bitter to the point of being fanatical."

"I gathered that."

"They think it means giving up sovereignty and independence, having to take orders from a bunch of strangers who are light-years away. They're afraid of their jobs, afraid of change. But this kind of thing… It makes me sick and ashamed."

"Where were the Nightbirds while all this was going on?” Horne asked, remembering the complete desertion of the street.

"They only work here,” Ardric said, “and eat, and sleep. Otherwise they don't get involved."

"They might at least have called the police,” Horne. grumbled.

"Not they,” said Ardic. “Unless it was one of their own in trouble. Then they can get involved fast enough."

The ambulance came. Horne said thanks to the other spacemen while Vinson was being loaded in.

"May I ride with you?” Ardric asked. “I'd like to know how he is."

They rode together to the hospital with Vinson.

Horne called Port Authority and had a message sent to Captain Wasek, and then accepted treatment for his own cuts and bruises. After that he sat with Ardric, glad of the company.

Wasek came, angry and upset. Horne told him the story and Wasek shook hands with Ardric.

"I'm grateful,” he said. He looked at the collar tabs on Ardric's tunic. “I'm not familiar with all the insignia, I'm afraid. You're Skereth merchant fleet, I know, but…"

"Assistant Pilot,” Ardric said. “What you would call a Second."

"Well, now,” said Wasek. “Well! That's very fitting. So is Vinson a Second. What ship?"

"None,” said Ardric, “right now."

"Out of a berth, eh? Stay around then… because we may be out of a Second."

They were.

"Fractured left tibia, and a moderate concussion, with multiple contusions and abrasions,” the doctor said, “and lucky it wasn't worse. But he won't pilot any ships for a while."

Horne was sorry. He had come to like young Vinson. Still, it was better than it might have been. Vinson, and quite possibly he too, might have been dead if Ardric hadn't come along.

Wasek was looking at Ardric. “We can't take off without a Second. How about it? Are you qualified, and would you like the berth?"

"Would I?” said Ardric, and began pulling papers from his tunic pocket. “Here's my ticket, flight record, health card."

He was qualified. When the Vega Queen lifted off, Ardric was sitting in Vinson's chair, and Horne was glad that they had been able to repay Ardric in this way for the considerable service he had done them. Even Vinson had been glad of that, though he regretted being left behind.

When the time came to set the course after lift-off, Horne simply said, “Arcturus III,” and let Ardric punch the tapes and feed them into the computers. He let Ardric set up the results on the board. Only then did he check the coordinates out and find them to be correct. He nodded, and Ardric grinned.

"First hurdle,” he said, and leaned back in his chair like someone relaxing from a long run. Horne noticed that his eyes were very dark blue, as the boy Mica's had been, and it crossed his mind that there was something upsetting about blue eyes being as opaque as black ones. But they looked eagerly at the view-screen windows, at the stars, and Ardric said, “I never thought I'd get as far as Vega, except when Skereth joined the Federation, and I could be an old man by then."

Horne had explained about Mica and Durin before, and how he and Vinson had happened to come into the Nightbirds’ quarter. “The two boys seemed pretty certain that Morivenn would swing it, in spite of the opposition."

"If anybody can do it,” Ardric said, “he can."

Horne would have liked to meet, or at least see, Morivenn, whose voyage to Vega had caused him so much trouble. But Morivenn and the three other men of his delegation kept to their cabins even at mealtimes.

"Other passengers came aboard at Skereth too, you know,” said Ardric. “They're wise to be afraid. One fanatic with a weapon can end things very quickly."

His dark-blue eyes, it seemed to Horne, were always on the stars and for a long time he thought that Ardric was looking at space the way Vinson had looked at it, with a boy's excitement. Then he began to feel that there was something else in Ardric's attitude, something more calculating than excitement, or perhaps it was not the stars that excited him at all, but something else.

But that was silly. After all, Horne thought, Vinson was of Earth stock even if he was Vega-born, and he and I have a common denominator of feeling. Ardric is of a different world, different stock, different culture. How do I know how a man of Skereth looks when he is expressing excitement, or any other emotion for that matter? And if there are times when his mouth seems to lose that friendly smile and becomes thin-lipped and rather too harsh, that too may simply be because people of his stock normally have thin lips which give an impression of harshness.

He was competent, anyway. Highly competent. And, except for the occasional periods of withdrawal when it seemed to Horne that he might be thinking flinty thoughts, he was good company during the watches they shared.

Then Ardric volunteered a piece of information that explained things to Horne.

"My father,” he said abruptly one day, when he saw Horne looking at him curiously, ‘is bitterly against joining the Federation. I think sometimes how he must feel to know that I'm here, helping to pilot Morivenn on his way to Vega."

The ship plowed her way between the island suns, heading for Arcturus where they would discharge cargo and some people from the Federation consular service, take on more cargo and the returning consular personnel. Then they would lift off for the long home-flight to the heart of the galaxy, to Vega. They came out of FTL drive, into normal space. Arcturus burned larger and brighter in the screens until presently all the other stars were burned away and there was only the single furnace blaze to fill the sky.

"I've been here before,” said Ardric. “I can take her in."

"I'm sure you could,” said Horne, “but regulations require me to do it."

Ardric grinned. “Maybe. But don't forget the meteor-swarm. I was with a man who did, and it was…” he made a gesture of sliding one hand past the other, touching. “It was that close."

The meteor-swarm was periodic, and fully charted. Horne plotted his deceleration pattern to take full account of it, checked the coordinates twice through the computers and set up the combination on the board.

The Vega Queen, stately as a great tarnished carp in a pool of diamonds, swung her nose around and began the business of slowing down. It would take her three and one-half days, Vega Arbitrary Time, of spiraling toward the planetary surface to reach a speed that would enable her to land without setting herself and the surrounding air on fire.

The first day passed.

The second day passed, and it was dinnertime. Horne and Ardric were standing watch, four on and four off, and they ate in the pilot room together at the end of the third trick and the beginning of the fourth. It was Horne's turn to go off.

The steward brought the dinner in and they ate it. They, talked of the wonders of the wider galaxy, and at regular intervals Horne, since he was finishing his trick, rose to check the navigation-board and the all-important tell-tales that monitored planetary drift, the particles of debris attracted randomly by the gravitational field and impossible to chart. The automatic compensators were functioning perfectly.

The steward came again with coffee and the small glass of brandy for Horne. When it was Ardric's turn to go off he would have an equally small amount of the green liquor of Skereth.

Horne rose and checked the board again. He had his coffee and his brandy, formally handed over the pilot room to Ardric by punching the code in the log-tape, and went to his cabin, which was only a dozen steps away and connected to the pilot room with a direct-speaker alarm. He closed the door and began to undress. He was thinking that they should pass well clear of the meteor-swarm at about the mid-point of his next trick, when the dark closed over him with such swift waves of weakness that he barely made it to his bunk before he fell.

The next thing he knew there was a panic of noise, sirens, bells, human voices, shouts and screams, and someone was shaking him. Someone was slapping him, brutally pounding him awake. Even through the sick mists that clogged his brain and clouded his emotions, he could feel the cold and bitter hatred behind those blows and the speaking of his name.

He saw Wasek's face.

He mumbled an attempt at a question, trying desperately to come awake. He heard Wasek answer something about the meteor swarm and he said, “But not yet — next trick, my watch…

Wasek hauled him bodily erect. “This is your watch, you drunken murdering bastard. Get in there and do something if you can.” And he said something more about Ardric, but Horne didn't hear it. All he could hear now were the noises of the ship screaming and the people screaming and the feet running over the metal floors and the lifeboat hatches clanging. He started to walk the twelve steps to the pilot room, his knees giving under him and his belly weighted down with lead, and then something hit the ship again. Again? Had it been hit before? He couldn't remember with his mind but his body seemed to have a memory of jarring agony and wrenching metal. The lights went out and the corridor tilted upward, then slid away at an insane angle, and Horne went with it into the dark again.