CHAPTER I
Rendezvous
THERE IS A PLANET beyond the edge of the known, and its name is Rendezvous.
Few worlds are more lovely to the eyes of men. As the weary ships come in from space and loneliness, they see a yellow star against the great cold constellations; and nearing, they see its crowded glory swell to incandescence. The planet grows as the ships strain closer; it becomes a sapphire shield banded with clouds, blurred with rain and wind and mountain mists. The ships sweep around the planet, mooring themselves to an orbit between the moons, and it is not long before the boats spring from them and rush down out of the sky to land. And then, for a little while, the planet comes alive with noise and movement as human life spills free.
This might have been Earth, in some forgotten age before the glaciers went south. Here, there is the broad green swell of land, reaching out to a remote horizon. Far away, mountains begin; on the other side is the sea. The sky is big here, lifting above the world to blue immensity.
But the difference is what haunts you. There are trees, but they are not the oak and pine and elm-or palm, baobab, sequoia-of Earth, and the wind blows through their leaves with an alien sound. The fruits of the trees are sweet, pungent, luscious to eat, but always there is the hint of a taste men never knew before. The birds are not yours; the animals
of plain and forest have-six legs and a greenish shimmer to their fur. At night, the constellations bear the look of strangers, and there may be four moons in the sky.
No, it is not Earth, and the knowledge becomes a hunger in you and will not let you stay. But you have never seen Earth; and by now, the hunger has become so much a part of you that you could not find a home there, either. For you are a Nomad.
And only you have learned where to find this quiet place. To all others, Rendezvous lies beyond the edge of the known.
CHAPTER 11
Secret War?
THERE WAS nobody else on the boat, They had all swarmed off to pitch their booths and mingle with the rest, to frolic and fight and transact hard-headed business. Peregrine Joachim Henry’s footsteps echoed bellow between the bare metal walls as be entered the airlock. The boat was a forty-meter column of steely comfortlessness, standing among its fellows at the end of Nomad Valley. The temporary village had mushroomed a good two kilometers from the boats.
Ordinarily, Joachim would have been down there, relaxed and genial; but he was a captain, and the Captain’s Council was meeting,. And this was no assembly to miss, he thought. Not with the news be had to give them.
He took the gravity shaft, floating along the upward beam to the top bunkroom where he had his box. Emerging,
he crossed the floor, opened the chest. Joachim decided that a shave was in order, and ran the depilator quickly over his face.
He didn’t usually bother with regalia-like all Nomads, be wore any outfit he cared to, or went nude, on a voyage. Visits to planetary surfaces didn’t ordinarily require him to dress formally; but the uniform-was expected of him.
“We’re a hidebound bunch, really,” he reflected aloud as he glanced in the mirror. It showed him a stocky man of medium height, dark-skinned, with grizzled hair and squinted gray eyes in a mesh of crow’s-feet. The face was blunt and battered, crossed with deep Lines, but it wasn’t old. He was in early middle age-sixty-five years-but there was vitality in him.
The kilt, with its red-black-and-green Peregrine tartan, was tight around his waist. Had the, damn thing shrunk? No, he was afraid he bad expanded. Not much, but Jere would have kidded him about it, and then let out the garment for him.
Jere. It was fifteen years now since she had made the Long Trip. And the children were grown and married. Well-He went on dressing. Over his light shirt be slipped an elaborately embroidered vest, with the Joachim coat of arms woven into the pattern. His sleeve bore the insignia of rank-captain-and service-astrogation. Buskins went on the legs; pooch and bolstered gun at the waist, and plumed bonnet on the close-cropped head. Because it was hereditary and expected of him, be wore the massive gold necklace and its diamond-crusted pendant. A purple and scarlet cloak flapped over his shoulders, gauntlets on his hands.