“Also,” said Joachim blandly, “the Peregrine will be in a primitive region-and hostile where it’s not primitive-and won’t have the normal chance to turn an honest credit. We’ll want a-say a twenty percent share in all profits made between now and next rendezvous.”
“Twenty percent!” choked Ortega.
“Sure. We’re risking our whole ship, aren’t we?”
CHAPTER III
I l a l o a
PEREGRINE THORKILD SEAN could not forget the girl who had stayed behind on Nerthus. She had gone alone into the city, Stellamont, and had not come back. After a while, he had taken a flier and gone the twelve hundred kilometers to her fatber’s home. There was no hope-she couldn’t endure the Nomad life.
Two years can be a long time, and memories blur. Thorldld Sean walked through the Nomad camp under the heaven of Rendezvous and knew how far away Nerthus was.
Darkness had come to the valley-iiot the still shadow of Nerthus, which was almost another Earth, but the living, shining night of Rendezvous. Fires burned high, and the camp was one babel. The trading had gone on till it was done. The Captains’ Council had met, and its proposals had been voted on by the men of the ships-now the time of rendezvous was ready to culminate in the Mutiny. Un-married women were not allowed to attend that three-day saturnalia-the Nomads were strict with their maidens-but for everyone else it would be a colorful memory to take skyward.
Except for me, thought Sean.
He passed a bonfire, crossing the restless circle of its light-a tall slender young man, fair-skinned, brown-haired, blue-eyed, his face thin and mobile, his movements angular
and loose-jointed.
Somebody bafled him, but be ignored it and went on his way. Not tonight, not tonight. Presently the camp was bebind him. He found the trail he was looking for and followed it steeply upward out of the dale. The night of
Rendezvous closed in on him.
This was not Earth, nor was it Nerthus, or any other planet where men had built their homes. He could walk free here, and no hdden menace of germ or mold or poisoned tooth waited for him; yet somehow Sean felt that he had never been on so foreign a world.
Three moons were up, One was a far white shield, cold in the velvet sky; the second a glowing amber crescent, and the third almost full and hurtling between the stars so that he could see it moving. Three shadows followed him over the long, whispering grass, and one of them moved by itself. The light was so bright that the shadows were not black; they were a dusky blue on the moon-frosted ground.
Overhead were the stars, constellations unknown to the home of humanity. The Milky Way was still there, a bridge of light, and he could see the cold brilliance of Spica and Canopus, but most of heaven was strange.
The hills into which he went stirred with moonlight and shadow. Forest lifted on one side of his path, high feathery leaved trees overgrown with blossoming vines. On the other side there was grass and bush and lonely copse. Now and then be saw one of the six-leged animals of Rendezvous. None of them were afraid; it was as if they knew be wasn’t going to shoot at them.
Light moved here and there. The glowing insects bobbed on frail wings over the phosphorescent glow of lamp-flowers. Sean let the sounds of the night flow into him. The memory of his wife drowned as if in rippling water, and the new eagerness within him was a quiet, steady burning.
She stood where she had told him to come, leaning against a tree and watching him stride across the hills. His footsteps grew swifter until he was running.
The Nomads had looked for an Earthlike planet-E-planet -outside of the ordinary space lanes, a meeting place which no others would be likely to find. They had not explored much beyond the site chosen for their gatherings, but even so it had been a shock, fifty years later, when they learned that Rendezvous had natives after all, The laws on the Union were of small concern, but aborigines could mean trouble.