The Tar Aiym Krang Part 5

Isn't it possible that maybe the locals ...?' '... haven't got a chance,' finished Truzenzuzex. 'They're outnumbered and outgunned, and not a regular armed force among them in the first place. As the AAnn doubtlessly surmised well in advance. I doubt 'f their s.h.i.+ps even have doublekay drives. Theirs is only a colony and they wouldn't have need of many.'

'Typical AAnn macoeuvre. d.a.m.n those anthropomorphic b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Always sniping and chipping at edges. I wish they'd come right out and say they're going to contest us for this part of the galaxy. Let 'cm stand up and fight like men!'

'No can do, brother, because they obviously aren't. And I refer not to their physiologies alone.

According to the Aann standards set down by their philosophy of "perpetual warfare as the natural state of things," any advantage you can get over your opponent is by definition of success ethical. They're not immoral, just amoral. Sneak attacks are like sugar - pardon, -like bread- to them.'

'If the major agreed to step in I'm sure headquarters would give retroactive approval to the action,' Bran said. 'They'd offer obeisance in public, sure, but privately I'll bet Marshal N'Gara would approve.'

'He might. Might not. As soldiers grow older and more powerful their personalities tend more and more to the mercurial. I can't see dear sweet Gonzalez risking a chance to help a bunch of aliens, especially non-Commonwealh. He's far too fond of his scotch and imported Terran cigars, Besides, to undertake such an action would require at least a modic.u.m of imagination, a commodity in which our commander is sadly deficient. Look. It's starting already.

Bran glanced up above the communications equipment to the huge battle screen. Out in the void a number of s.h.i.+ps represented only by ghostly dots were manoeuvring across thousands of kilometres for position in a battle which would prove notable only for its brevity. Somehow the locals had mustered six s.p.a.ceworthy s.h.i.+ps. He'd bet a year's credit not one of them was a regular wars.h.i.+p. Police launches, most likely. Opposite, the well-drilled, superbly disciplined Aann force was to lining one of its characteristic tetrahedrons. Fifteen or so attack s.h.i.+ps, a couple of destroyers, and two bloated pips that in a normal battle situation he would have interpreted as dreadnoughts. The finer instruments on the big board told the true story: same ma.s.s, small gravity wells. Troop carriers, nursing dozens of small, heavily screened troop shuttles.

He'd observed AAnn occupation forces in action before. No doubt by now the members of the first a.s.sault wave were resting comfortably in their respective holds, humming softly to themselves and waiting for the 'battle' to begin, masking sure their armour was highly polished, their nerve-prods fully charged ...

He slammed a fist down on the duralloy board, sc.r.a.ping the skin on the soft underside of his wrist. There were ten stingers and a cruiser in the humanx force ... more than a match for the AAnn, even without the dubious 'help' of the locals. But he knew even before the pathetic debate of a few moments ago that Major Gonzalez would never stir from his wood-panelled cabin on the Altair to intervene in any conflict where humanx interests weren't directly threatened. He paused at a. sudden thought. Of course, if a confrontation could be forced to the point that such a threat occurred ... still no certain guarantee ...

definite court-martial ... dismissal from the Corps ... 300,000 sentient beings ... processing camps... He suddenly wasn't so sure that he wanted to make captain after all. Still, he'd need the concurrance of...

'Bran, our drive appears to lie malfunctioning.'

'Wha? I don't...'

'Yes, there is no question about it. We appear to be drifting unavoidably into the area of incipient combat. At top speed, no less. A most unusual awkwardness, wouldn't you agree?'

'Oh. Oh, yes.' A pseudo-smile sharp as a scimitar cut his face. "I can see that we're helpless to prevent it. G.o.d d.a.m.n unfortunate situation. Naturally we'll have to make emergency preparations to defend ourselves. I don't think the AAnn computers will be overly discerning about s.h.i.+ps which float into their target area.'

'Correct. I was just about to commence my own injections.'

'Myself also.' He snuggled back into the reaction seat, felt the field that enabled them to manoeuvre at high speed and still live take hold gently. 'Best hurry about it.'

He followed accepted procedure and did his best to ignore the barely perceptible pressures of the needles as they slipped efficiently into the veins on his legs. The special drugs that heightened his perceptions and released the artificial inhibitions his mind raised to constrain the killer instinct immediately began to take effect, A beautiful rose-tinted glow of freedom slipped over his thoughts. This was proper.

This was right'. This was what he'd been created for. Above and behind him he knew that Truzenzuzex was undergoing a similar treatment, with different drugs. They would stimulate his natural ability to make split-second decisions and logical evaluations without regard to such distractions as Hive rulings and elaborate moral considerations.

Shortly after the Amalgamation, when human and thranx scientists were discovering one surprising thing after another about each other, thranx psychologists unearthed what some humans had long suspected.

The mind of h.o.m.o sapiens was in a perpetual state of uneasy balance between total emotionalism and computer like control. When the vestiges of the latter, both natural and artificial, were removed, man reverted to a kind of control led animalism. He became the universe's most astute and efficient killing machine. If tile reverse was induced he turned into a vegetable. No use had been found for that state, but for theformer ...

It was kept fairly quiet. After a number of gruesome but honest demonstrations put on by the thranx and their human aides, mankind acknowledged the truth of the discovery, with not a small sigh of relief. But they didn't like to be reminded of it. Of course a certain segment of humanity had known it all along and wasn't affected by the news. Others began to read the works of ancients like Donation Francois de Sade with a different eye. For their part human psychologists brought into clearer light the marvelous thranx ability to make rapid and correct decisions with an utter lack of emotional distraction and a high level of practicality. Only, the thranx didn't think it so marvellous. Their Hive rulings and complicated systems of ethics had long kept that very same ability tied down in the same ways humanity had its killer desires.

The end result of all the research and experimentation was this: in combination with a ballistics computer to select and gauge targets, a thranx-b.u.man-machine triumvirate was an unbeatable combination m s.p.a.ce warfare. Thranx acted as a check on human and human as a goad to thranx. It was efficient and ruthless.

Human notions of a 'gentleman's' war disappeared forever. Only the AAnn had ever dared to challenge the system more than once, and they were tough enough and smart enough to do it sporadically and only when they felt the odds to be highly in their favour.

It was fortunate that thranx and human proved even more compatible than the designers of the system had dared hope - because the nature of the drug-machine tie-up resulted in a merging of the two minds on a conscious level, it was as if the two loves of a brain were to fight out a decision between themselves, with the compromise then being paused on to the spinal cord and the rest of the body for actual implementation, Some stings.h.i.+p pilots likened it more closely to two twins in the womb. It was that intimate a relations.h.i.+p. Only in that way would the resultant fighting machine operate at 100 per cent effectiveness. A man's partner was his s.h.i.+p-brother. Few stinger operators stayed married long, except those who were able to find highly understanding wives.

The tingling mist flowed over his eyes, dimming and yet enhancing his vision. The tiniest things became obvious to his perception. Specks of dust in the cabin atmosphere became clear as boulders. His eyes fastened on the white diamonds on the battle screen with all the concentration of a starving cobra. All stinger pilots admitted to a slight but comforting sense of euphoria when under battle drugs. Bran was experiencing it now. For public relations purposes the enforcement posters insisted it was a beneficial byproduct of the HIP drugs. The pilots knew it for what it was; the natural excitement that overtakes most completely uninhibited humans as they antic.i.p.ate the thrill of the kill. His feelings whirled within, but his thoughts stayed focused.

'Up the universe, oh squishy bug!' he yelled drunkenly. Off from never-never land Truzenzuzex's voice floated down to him.

'Up the universe, oh smelly primate!' The s.h.i.+p plunged towards one corner of the Aann tetrahedron.

The enemy force stood it as long as possible. Then three s.h.i.+ps broke out to intercept their reckless charge. The rest of the formation continued to form, undaunted. Undoubtedly no one in a position of command had yet noticed that this suicidal charge did not come from the region of the pitiful planetary defence force circling below. And having all heard the interfleet broadcast they knew it couldn't possibly be a Commonwealth vessel. Bran centred their one medium SCCAM on the nearest of the three attackers, the pointer. Dimly, through the now solid perfumed fog, he could make out the outraged voice of Major Gonzalez on inters.h.i.+p frequency. It impinged irritatingly on his wholely occupied conscious.

Obviously Command hadn't bought their coded message of engine trouble.

'You there, what do you think you're doing! Get back in formation! s.h.i.+p number ... s.h.i.+p number twenty-five return to Formation! Acknowledge, iih ... by heaven! Braunsch-weiger, whose s.h.i.+p is that?

Someone get me some information, there!

It was decidedly too noisy in the pod. He shut off the grid and they drove on in comparative silence. He conjured up a picture of the AAnn admiral. Comfortably seated in his cabin on one of the troop carriers, chewing lightly on a narco-stick ... one eye c.o.c.ked on the Commonwealth Force floating nearby.

Undoubtedly he'd also been monitoring the conversation between the planetary governor and Major Gonzalez, Had a good laugh, no doubt. Expecting a nice, routine ma.s.sacre. His thoughts must now be fuzzing a bit, especially if he'd noticed the single stinger blasting crazily towards the centre of his formation. Bran hoped he'd split an ear-sac listening to his trackers.

His hand drifted down to the firing studs. The calm voice of Truzenzuzex insinuated itself maddeningly in his mind. No, it was already in his mind.

'Hold. Not yet,' Pause. 'Probability.'

He tried angrily to force the thought out and away. It wouldn't go. It was too much like trying to cut away part of one's own ego. His hand stayed off the firing stud as the cream-coloured dot grew maddeningly large in the screen.

Again the calm, infuriating voice. 'Changing course ten degrees minus y, plus x two degrees achieve optimum intercept tangent.'

Bran knew they were going to die, but in his detached haze of consciousness it seemed an item of only peripheral importance. The problem at hand and the sole reason for existence was to kill as many of them as possible. That their own selves would also be destroyed was & certainty, given the numbers arrayed against them, but they might at least blunt the effect of the AAnn invasion. A tiny portion of him offered thanks for Truzenzuzex's quiet presence. He'd once seen films of a force of stings.h.i.+ps in action with only human operators. It had resembled very much a tridee pix he'd seen on Ten-a showing sharks in a feeding frenzy.

The moment notified him of itself. 'Firing one!' There were no conflicting suggestion from the insectoid half of his mind. He felt the gentle lurch of his body field as the s.h.i.+p immediately executed an intricate, alloy-tearing manoeuvre that would confuse any return fire and at the same time allow them to take the remaining two enemy vessels between them. Without the field he would have been jelled.

The disappearance of a gravity well from the screen told him that the SCCAM projectile had taken the AAnn s.h.i.+p, piercing its defences. A violent explosion flared silently in s.p.a.ce. A SCCAM was incapable of a 'near-miss.' The SCCAM system itself was a modification of the dobblekay drive that powered the s.h.i.+ps of most s.p.a.ce-going races. When human and thranx met it was found that the human version was more powerful and efficient than the thranx posigravity drive. It also possessed a higher power-conservation ratio, which made it more reasonable to operate. Working with their human counterparts after the Amalgamation, thranx scientists soon developed a number of improvements in the already remarkable system. This modified propulsive drive was immediately installed in all humanx s.h.i.+ps, and other races to order the components which would enable them to make their own modifications. A wholely thranx innovation, however, had been the adaption of the gravity drive as a weapon of irresistible power. The SCCAM projectiles were in actuality therm-o-nuclear devices mounted on small s.h.i.+p drives, with the exception that all their parts other than those requiring melting points over 2400 degrees were made of alloyed osmium. Using the launching vessel's own gravity well as the initial propelling force, the projectile would be dispatched towards a target. At a predetermined sate distance from the s.h.i.+p, the sh.e.l.l's own drive would kick in. Instantly the drive would go into deliberate overload. Impossible to dodge, the overloaded field would be attracted to the nearest large gravity well in this case, the drive system of an enemy s.h.i.+p. Coupled with the uncontrolled energy of a fusion reaction, the two intersecting drive fields would irrevocably eliminate any trace of the target. And it would be useless for an enemy vessel to try to escape by turning off its own field, for while it might survive impact with the small projectile field, the s.h.i.+p had not yet been constructed that could take the force of a fusion explosion Unscreened. And as the defensive screens were powered by the posigravity drives ...

He felt the s.h.i.+p lurch again, not as violently this time. Another target swung into effective range. He fired again. Truzenzuzex had offered a level-four objection and Bran had countered with a level-two objective veto. The computer agreed with Bran and released the sh.e.l.l. Both halves of the s.h.i.+p-mind had been partially correct. The result was another hit ... but just barely.

The AAnn formation seemed to waver. Then the left half of the tetrahedron collapsed as the s.h.i.+ps on that side sought to counter this alarming attack on their flank. More likely than not the AAnn commander had ordered the dissolution. Penned up in a slow, clumsy troop carrier he was by now likely becoming alarmed for his own precious skin. Heartened by this unstrategic move on the part of their opponents the native defensive force was diving on the broken formation from the front, magnifying the confusion if not the destruction and trying to avert the attention of the Aann wars.h.i.+ps from their unexpected ally. Bran had just gotten off a third shot -amiss- when a violent concussion rocked the stinger. Even in his projective field he was jerked violently forward. The lights flickered, dimmed, and went off, to be replaced a moment later by the eerie blue of the emergency system. He checked his instruments and made a matter-of-course report upwards.

'Tru, this time the drive is off for real. We're going to go into loose drift only ... be paused. A typically ironic reply was not forthcoming.

Tru? How are things at your end?' The speaker gave back only a muted hiss. He jiggled the k.n.o.b several times. It seemed operative. 'Tru? Say something, you slug! Old snail, termite, boozer ... G.o.d d.a.m.n it, say something!'

With the cessation of the s.h.i.+p's capacity for battle the HIP antidotes had automatically been shot into his system. Thank Limbo the automedics were still intact I He felt the killing urge flow out of him, heavily, to be replaced by the dull aftertaste and temporary lethargy that inevitably followed battle action.

Cursing and crying all at once he began fighting with his harness. He turned off the body field, not caring if the s.h.i.+p suddenly decided to leap into ward rive and spatter him all over the bulkhead. Redfaced, he started scrambling over broken tubing and sparkling short-circuits up to where Truzenzuzex lay in his own battle couch. His own muscles refused to respond and he d.a.m.ned his arms which persisted in slipping off grips like d.a.m.n hemp. He hadn't realized, in the comfort of HIPnosis, how badly the little vessel had been damaged. Torn sheeting and wavering filaments floated everywhere, indicating a loss of s.h.i.+pboard gravity. But the pod had remained intact and he could breathe without his hoses.

The thranx's position was longer and lower than his own, since the insect's working posture was lying p.r.o.ne and facing forward. Therefore the first portion of his fellow ensign's body that Bran encountered was the valentine-shaped head with its brilliant, multifaceted compound eyes, The familiar glow in them had dimmed but not disappeared. Furiously he began to ma.s.sage the b-thorax above the neck joint in an operation designed to stimulate the thranx's open circulatory system. He kept at it despite the cloying wetness that insisted on floating into his eyes. Throwing his head back at least made the blood from the gash on his forehead drift temporarily backwards.

'Tru! C'mon, mate! Move, curse you! Throw up, do something, dammit!' The irony of trying to rouse his companion so that he could then be conscious when the Aann disruption beams scattered their component parts over the cosmos did not interrupt his movements.

Truzenzuzex began to stir feebly, the hissing from the breathing spicules below Bran's ministering hands pulsing raggedly and unevenly.

'Mmmfff! Ooooo! My friend, I hereby inform all and sundry that a blow on the cranium is decidedly not conducive to literate cognitation! A little lower and to the right, please, is where it itches. Alas, I fear I am in for a touch of the headache.'

He raised a tmehand slowly to his head and Bran could see where a loose bar of something bad struck hard after the body-field had lapsed. There was an ugly dark streak in the insect's azure exoskeleton. The thranx organism was exceptionally tough, but very vulnerable to deep cuts and punctures because of their open circulatory system. When their armour remained intact they were well-nigh invulnerable. Much more so than their human counterparts. The same blow probably would have crushed Bran's skull like eggsh.e.l.l. The great eyes turned to face him.

's.h.i.+p-brother, I notice mild precipitation at the corners of your oculars, differing in composition from the fluid which even yet is leaking from your bead. I know the meaning of such a production and a.s.sure you it is not necessary. Other than injury to my immaculate and irresistible beauty, I am quite all right ... I think.

'Incidentally, it occurs to me that we both have been alive entirely too long, As I appear to be at least momentarily incapacitated I would appreciate it if you would cease your face-raining, get back to your position, and find out just what the h.e.l.l is going on.'

Bran wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes. What Tru said was perfectly correct. He had been so absorbed in reviving the insect be bad failed to notice that by ail reasonable standards of warfare they should both have been dead several minutes now. The AAnn might be unimaginative fighters, but they were efficient. He scrambled back to his seat and flipped emergency power to the battle screen. What he saw there stunned his mind if not his voice.

'Oooo-wowwww! Pibbix.x.x! Go get 'em Sixth, baybee!'

'Will you cease making incomprehensible mouth-noises and tell me what's taking place? My eyes are not fully focused yet, but I can see that you are bouncing around in your seat in a manner that is m no way related to s.h.i.+p actions.'

Bran was too far gone to hear. The scene on the screen was correspondingly weak, but fully visible none the less. It resembled a ping-pong game being played in zero gravity by two high-speed computers. The AAnn force was in full retreat, or rather, the remainder of it was. The bright darts of Commonwealth stings.h.i.+ps were weaving in and out of the retreating pattern with characteristic unpredictability.

Occasionally a brief, terse flare would denote the spot where another s.h.i.+p had departed the plane of material existence. And a voice drifted somehow over the roaring, screaming babble on the communicator, a voice that could belong to no one but Major Gonzalez. Over and over and over it repeated the same essential fact in differing words.

'What happened what happened what happened what...?'

Bran at this time suffered his second injury of the action. He sprained a lattisimus, laughing.

It was all made very clear later, at the court-martial. The other members of the Task Force had seen one of their members break position and dive on the AAnn formation.' Their pilot-pairings had stood the resultant engagement as long as possible. Then they began to peel out and follow. Only the cruiser Altair bad taken no part in the battle. Her crew bad a hard time living it down, even though it wasn't their fault.

Not so much as a tree on the planet had been scorched.

The presiding officer at the trial was an elderly thranx general officer from the Hiveworld itself. His ramrod stiffness combined with fading exoskelelon and an acid voice to make him a formidable figure indeed. As for the majority of the Task Force, its members were exonerated of wrongdoing. It was ruled that they had acted within Commonwealth dictates in acting 'under a justifiable circ.u.mstance where an act of violence against Commonwealth or Church property or persons shall be met with a SI force necessary to negate the effects of such violence. This provision was ruled to have taken effect when the AAnn s.h.i.+ps had engaged stings.h.i.+p number twenty-five in combat. That s.h.i.+p number twenty-five had provoked the encounter was a point that the court would 'take under careful study ... at length.'

Ensigns Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzu of the Zex were ordered stripped of all rank and dismissed from the service. As a preliminary, however, they were to be awarded the Church Order of Merit, one star cl.u.s.ter. This was done. Unofficially, each was also presented with a scroll on which those citizens of the colony-planet known as Goodhunting had inscribed their names and thanks ... all two hundred and mnety-five thousand of them.

Major Julio Gonzalez was promoted to commander and transferred immediately to a quiet desk post in an obscure system populated by semi-inteiligent amphibians.

After first being formally inducted into his s.h.i.+p-brother's clan, the Zex, Bran had entered the Church and had become deeply absorbed in the Chancellory of Alien Sociology, winning degrees and honours there.

Truzenzuzex remained on his home planet of Willow-Wane and resumed his preservice studies in psychology and theoretical history. The t.i.tle of Eint was granted shortly after. Their interests converged independently until both were immersed in the study of the ancient Tar-Aiym civilization-empire. Ten years had pa.s.sed before they had remet, and they had been together ever since, an arrangement which neither had had cause to regret.

'Buy a winter suit, sir? The season is fast nearing, and the astrologers forecast cold and sleet. The finest Pyrrm pelts, good sir"

'Pas? No. No thank you, vendor.' The turnout to their little inn loomed just ahead, by the seller of prayer-bells.

Bran felt an uncommonly strong need of sleep.

Chapter Six.

Flinx returned to his apartment to set himself in order for the trip. On the way back from the inurb he had stopped at a shop he knew well and purchased a small s.h.i.+p-bag. It was of a type he'd often seen carried by crewmen at the port and would do equally as well for him. It was light, had a built-in sensor lock on the seal, and was well-nigh indestructible, They haggled formally over the price, finally settling on the sum of nine-six point twenty credits. He could probably have cut the price another credit, but was too occupied by thought of the trip, so much so that the vendor inquired as to his health.

At the apartment he wasn't too surprised to find that all his possessions of value or usefulness fit easily into the one bag. He felt only a slight twinge of regret. He looked around for something else to take, but the bed wouldn't fit, nor would the portikitchen, and he doubted there'd be a shortage of either on the s.h.i.+p anyway. Memories were stored comfortably elsewhere. He shouldered the bag and left the empty room.

The concierge looked at him warily as he prepared to leave her the keys. She was generally a good woman, but inordinately suspicious, in reply to her persistent questioning he said only that he was departing on a journey of some length and had no idea when he would return. No, he wasn't 'running from the law'. He could see that the woman was suffering from a malady known as tridee addiction, and her imagination had been drugged in proportion. Would she hold the room for his return? She would ...

for four months' rent, in advance if you please. He paid it rather than stand and argue. It took a large slice out of the hundred credits he'd made so recently, but he found that he was in a hurry to spend the money as quickly as possible.

He strolled out into the night. His mind considered sleep but his body, tense with the speed at which events had been moving around him, vehemently disagreed'. Sleep was impossible. And it was pleasant out. He moved out into the lights and noise, submerging himself in. the familiar frenzy of the marketplace.

He savoured the night-smells of the food crescent, the raucous hooting of the barkers and sellers and vendors, greeting those he knew and smiling wistfully at an occasional delicate face peeping out from the pastel lit windows of the less reputable saloons.

Sometimes he would spot an especially familiar face. Then he would saunter over and the two would chat amiably for a while, swapping the stones and gossip of which Flinx always had a. plentiful supply.

Then the rich trader or poor beggar would rub his red hair for luck and they'd part - this time, at least, for longer than the night.

If a jungle could be organized and taxed, it would be called Drallar.

He had walked nearly a mile when he noticed-the slight lightening of the western sky that signified the approach of first-fog (there being no true dawn on Moth). The time had run faster than expected. He should be at the port shortly, but there remained one last thing to do.

He turned sharply to his right and hurried down several alleys and backways he knew well. Nearer the centre of the marketplace, which was quieter at night than the outskirts, he came on a st.u.r.dy if small frame building, it advertised on its walls metal products of all kinds for sale. There was a combination lock, a relic, on the inside of the door, but he knew how to circ.u.mvent that. He was careful to close it quietly behind him.

It was dark in the little building but light seeped in around the open edges of the roof, admitting air but not thieves. He stole softly to a back room, not needing even the dim light. An old woman lay there, snoring softly on a simple but luxuriously blanketed bed. Her breathing was shallow but steady, and there was what might have been a knowing smile on the ancient face. That was nonsense, of course. He stood staring silently at the wrinkled parchment visage for several long moments. Then he bent. Gently s.h.i.+fting the well-combed white hair to one side he planted a single kiss on the bony cheek. The woman stirred but did not awaken. He backed out of the room as quietly as he had entered, remembering to lock the main door behind him.

Then be turned and set off at a brisk jog in the direction of the shuttleport, Pip dozing stonelike on one shoulder.

Chapter Seven.

The great port lay a considerable distance from the city, so that its noise, fumes, and bustling commerce would not interfere with the business of the people or the sleep of the king. It was too far to walk. He hailed aMeepah -beast rickshaw and the driver sent the fleet-footed creature racing for the port. The Meepahs were fast and could dodge jams of more modem traffic. It was a sporting way to travel, and the moist wind whistling past his face wiped away the slight vestiges of sleepiness which had begun to overtake him. As the animals were pure sprinters and good for only one long run an hour they were also expensive. They flew past slower vehicles and great hoverloaders bringing tons of goods to and from the port. As they had for centuries and doubtless would for centuries to come, the poor of Moth walked along the sides of the highway. There were none of the public moving walkways on Moth that could be found in profusion in the capitals of more civilized planets. Besides being expensive, the nomad populace tended to cut them up for the metal.

When he reached an area away from the bustling commercial pits that he thought would be close to the private docks, he paid off the driver, debarked, and hurried off into the great tubular buildings. He knew more than a little of the layout of the great port from his numerous trips here as a child. Where his interest in the place had sprung from he couldn't guess. Certainly not from Mother Mastiff! But ever since an early age he'd been fascinated by the port for the link it provided with other worlds and races. When he had been able to steal away from that watchful parental eye he'd come here, often walking the entire distance on short, unsteady legs. He'd sit for hours at the feet of grizzled old crewmen who chuckled at his interest and spun their even older tales of the void and the pinp.r.i.c.ks of life and consciousness scattered through it for his eager mind and the fawning attention he gave freely. There were times when he'd stay till after dark. Then he'd sneak ever so carefully home, always into the waiting, scolding arms of Mother Mastiff. But at the port he was all but mesmerized. His favourites bad been the stories of the interstellar freighters, those huge, balloonlike vessels that plied the distances between the inhabited worlds, transporting strange cargoes and stranger pa.s.sengers. Why sonny, they'd tell him, if'n it weren't fer the freighters, the hull d.a.m.n uneeverse 'ud collapse, 'an Chaos himself 'ud return t'rule!

Now maybe he'd have a chance to see one of those fabulous vessels in person.

A muted growl went audible behind him and he turned to see the bulky shape of a cargo shuttle leap s.p.a.ceward, trailing its familiar of tail cream and crimson. The sound-absorbing material in its pit was further abetted by the layered gla.s.s of the building itself in m.u.f.fling the scream of the rockets and ramjets.

It was a sight he'd seen many times before, but a little piece of him still seemed to go s.p.a.ceward with each flight. He hurried on searching for a dock steward.

Approximately every fifteen minutes a shuttle landed or took off from Drallar port. And it was by no means the only one on the planet. Some of the private ports managed by the lumbering companies were almost as big. The shuttles took out woods, wood products, furs, light metals, food-stuffs; brought in machinery, luxury goods, traders, andtouristas . There! Checking bales of plastic panels was the white and black checkered uniform of a steward. He hurried over.

The man took in Flinx's clothing, age, and s.h.i.+p-bag and balanced these factors against the obviously dangerous reptile coiled alertly now about the boy's shoulder. He debated whether or not to answer the brief question Flinx put to him. Another, senior steward pulled up on a scoot, slowed and stooped.

'Trouble, Prin?'

The steward looked gratefully to his superior. "This ... person ... wishes direction to the House of Malaika's private docks.'