Redline the Stars

6

Jellico had little time to dwell on the puzzle of his unwelcome temporary hand the following day. The Queen was scheduled to set down on Canuche of Halio by late evening, and all the myriad tasks that accompanied planetfall kept him and the rest of her hands fully occupied.

Excitement ran high. The direction their immediate future would take would be decided on the rapidly nearing world.

Would they be lucky enough to pick up a charter, paying passengers or cargo that would enable them to write off the

expense of their next voyage, albeit at the cost of dictating what the destination would be?

What sort of goods would they find to restock the Solar Queen's nearly empty Trade holds? Jewels, textiles, luxury products, a vast array of manufactured items, raw materials, native produce—the planet's markets offered them all, along with a smattering of other, more exotic goods brought in by Traders calling at the busy spaceport, but they could not predict what the exact mix or quality would be during their own stay on-world.

Soon now, they would be able to start answering those questions. In the meantime, they could only speculate and do what they could to prepare for whatever opportunities might arise—or be induced to arise—on Canuche of Halio.

A yowl and snarl like something issuing from the throat of a werebeast out of legend shocked Dane Thorson full awake.

The chill of the air told him the Queen was still on night schedule, but he did no more than note that as he cautiously made for the door panel of his cabin, feeling his way in the near-dark. He was not about to activate the lights, not until he ascertained what was wrong. Something most assuredly was. Anything out of the ordinary on a starship was to be viewed with suspicion, and a commotion in the middle of the night was the equivalent of a formal alarm, especially when she was on-world, as the Solar Queen now was.

Cautiously, he slid the panel back a crack. There was no noise now, but he froze at what he saw outside.

They had taken on a passenger, then, short a time as the hatch had been open yesterday evening. Sinbad had detected and tracked down the invader, but the challenge it presented was a real one. The beast was large, a good foot long excluding the whip-thin, hairless tail, and its low, slender body was solidly muscled. The claws on the digits of its four feet were inconsequential, obviously never intended to serve as a defense against a foe of the cat's size. The teeth in its long, bewhiskered muzzle were another matter. They were sharp, and the creature was fast enough to wield them efficiently. Both Sinbad's ears were torn, and there was a deep gash on the side of his jaw.

However scored, the cat was the stronger fighter. The intruder's brown fur was matted with blood, and it was obviously nearing the end of its strength. Sinbad recognized that. He crouched low, watching intently. Occasionally, his tail lashed with incredible, utterly controlled violence, but otherwise he was motionless, seemingly more statue than living animal.

Suddenly, with no forewarning detectable by either his prey or the watching man, Sinbad sprang. The powerful leap carried him high, then down with spine-shattering force onto the back of his opponent. Strong, needle-sharp teeth closed on the neck. Fraction-seconds later, he shook the thing and cast it on the deck, where it kicked twice in a final, nerve-fired spasm and lay still.

Dane's eyes flicked to it, then away again. Moving quickly, he caught up Sinbad in his arms. They were no mere scratches that the cat had taken. The bleeding had to be stopped and medical care instituted at once. Immunization shots or no, the bite of an alien creature was one of the most potentially perilous accidents threatening an off- worlder. No prophylactic series could defend against every one of the myriad microorganisms that might be intro-

duced into the body by such means, many of which could overwhelm with terrifying speed and deadly result the defenses of beings not prepared by nature to confront them.

His lips compressed into a hard line. Holding the injured cat, working to stanch the bleeding that might soon dangerously weaken him, he realized that he no longer saw Sinbad simply as an animal kept aboard to perform a useful service for his human masters. This was a friend, a full member of the SoJar Queen's crew, the Chief of Pest Control in fact, as Rael Cofort had named him. Aye, there were grave limitations to the degree of communication attainable between members of his species and the feline, but Cargo-Masters and their apprentices working with precious little more on occasion when making contact with newly encountered or rarely visited races could manage to achieve lucrative trade relations beneficial to both parties . . .

When the crisis of the active bleeding was under control,

Thorson hit the intercom button with a force born of anxiety. Be the victim four-footed or biped, the situation remained a medical emergency. It was his responsibility to summon expert help to deal with it.

Rael was out of her bunk and drawing on her trousers before Dane had half begun his terse description of the situation. In the next moment, she had rammed her bare feet into deck boots and thrust her aims into the sleeves of her tunic, then, grabbing the medical kit that never lay far from her hand when she slept, she dashed from her cabin.

She reached Thorson's quarters at a full run, seconds before the senior Medic.

Her eyes sought and in the same moment found her patient. "Oh, Sinbad!" she exclaimed softly. "What's happened to you, my brave little warrior?"

The woman set her bag down on the bottom of the bed, snapping it open as she did so. Her movements, though quick, were smooth and quiet, designed not to further startle the injured animal. "Hold him steady, Dane," she instructed. "I want to take a quick look at those bites and then get to work on them."

"I've got him," he assured her.

Rael worked fast, with her full attention fixed on her small patient.

Dane watched in something akin to awe as her fingers seemed to fly of their own accord, at once gentle and sure in then- mission. Medicine was sometimes described as an art, and he realized he was witnessing a manifestation of that aspect of it here, a healing of body that encompassed mind and heart as well. Sinbad lay quiet in his arms, without fear, despite the excitement of the fight, his physical pain, the shock of his wounds, and the strangeness of the procedures being performed on him.

Dane glanced at Tau and caught his slow nod of approval. The Medic recognized excellence in his own profession, excellence that surpassed mere skill.

At last it was over. Cofort ran her hands several times along Sinbad's back and sides, drawing a rumbling purr from him. She touched her lips to the top of his head, then looked up at the Cargo-apprentice. "You did well to stop the bleeding as quickly as you did. Otherwise, we might have had to transfuse him, never a pleasant experience for an animal."

"He'll be all right now?" Thorson inquired anxiously.

"He should be. Doctor Tau will want to look him over tomorrow ... "

"It's rarely beneficial to the patient to change good Medics mid-treatment," Craig interjected. "I'm available for consultation, naturally, but Sinbad's getting excellent care

from his present physician."

"Thank you, Doctor." Tau's comment was as much an assurance to the Queen's crew, a public affirmation of her skill, as an acknowledgment of her right to treat as the first Medic on the scene.

Rael took the cat from Thorson. "What this poor little lad needs right now is a nice, comfortable, warm bed for the night. You won't mind him sharing yours, will you, Dane?"

"No. Sinbad often bunks with me." He liked the company and the feel of life-warmed fur beside him, but he sighed inwardly when the torn, as if on cue, jumped from her arms onto the bunk and settled himself, head on pillow, right in its center with almost mathematical precision.

He would not have the heart to shift his guest tonight, and if Sinbad did not move of his own accord, he would have

to spend the remainder of the sleep period pretzeled around their wounded defender.

That probability was equally apparent to those of his shipmates who had pushed into his small cabin, although given the circumstances they refrained from ribbing him openly.

Rael's eyes were still dancing with the laughter she had not yet screened when they met the Captain's and found the same merriment mirrored there.

It lasted but an instant, then the cold solar steel returned to them. Jellico strode out into the corridor. "Let's have a look at what's left of his opponent."

"A port rat," Rip Shannon informed him, "and, space, the size of it! Sinbad got off lightly."

The whole crew was gathered there, as was inevitable on a ship as small as the Solar Queen when an event of note occurred.

Jellico knelt beside the invader's corpse, not touching it but studying it with an interest that overrode his innate Terran distaste for the creatures. "The beast can't be blamed for fighting well for its life."

Cofort smiled her approval, but her eyes were dark when they rested on the animal. "No," she agreed. "There was no real contest, though, not once Sinbad got it cornered."

"He was lucky all the same. It was big enough to have done even more damage than it inflicted."

"Canuche grows them big," she told him, "and they're all over this town, what with the space- and seaports, the warehouse complexes serving them, and Happy City. We'll have to put up mesh nets whenever the hatch is open if we've got a metal set, and even then, we'll be fortunate not to ship a few. The Roving Star lifted with a pair the last time we were on-world. — Aggressive little beggars, too, and smart enough to duck most traps. It was the cats who finally took them for us, at the cost of some skin."

No one received that piece of information with any sense of pleasure. If humankind had intentionally carried Terra's felines into space, other, less desirable denizens of the mother planet had followed of their own accord. Few worlds indeed among those first settled, before the advent of the Federation's stringent pest control regulations, had been fortunate enough to escape a visit from the tough, incredibly adaptable rat, and where that colonizing species came it generally stayed.

Oddly enough, rats had rarely wrought the ecological havoc that had marked their spread on Terra. Rather, they had concentrated their activities in and around the dwellings and other establishments of their ancient hosts and adversaries. Sometimes they grew larger than prototype, more often smaller under the pressures and differences of their new environments, but invariably they were a problem. Mostly, they were readily manageable; in a few unfortunate cases, where the rodents had either not been detected quickly enough or had myopically been ignored, they had developed into a scourge threatening the very existence of the colony itself.

"We'll do what we can to keep them out, if only to save Sinbad another battering," the Captain promised. "Now, dispose of this thing, Thorson, and let's get back to our bunks for what's left of the night. We'll have plenty to do tomorrow besides sleeping the morning away."