“Agreed. You shall be told when to return.” With no further word he stalked from the room, his rudeness deliberate, Ziantha knew. Her guess was confirmed when she looked at Yasa.
The feline contoured face of the Salarika was expressionless as far as the human eye could tell, except that the alien’s lips were drawn very tight against her teeth, showing the sharp white points of what in her ancestors had been tearing, death-dealing fangs.
“Mackry,” Yasa observed in a thoughtful tone, her voice almost as emotionless as she could make her features, “takes his missions with a seriousness that suggests he sees before him a flight of stairs climbing to heights. Oftentimes when one’s attention is fixed too far ahead and at the wrong angle, one can trip over a crevice before one’s very feet. But in so much does he serve our purpose—we needed a reason to take off from Korwar without question from those using Mackry—though he does not reckon the truth that he is my servant here, rather than master.”
“You have learned something?” Ziantha asked.
Yasa purred. “Naturally, cubling. When Yasa tells eyes to see, ears to listen, noses to sniff, they obey. We know the general direction from which came Jucundus’s toy. Now we go in search of those who make it their mission in life to learn what is unknown or long forgotten. We go to Waystar.”
Waystar! Ziantha had heard of it all her short life. It was considered a legend by most of the star rovers, but it existed, as all the Guild knew well, though perhaps only a handful of a handful among them even guessed in what part of the galaxy it was located. It served the Guild in some respects, but it was not a possession of the veeps of the underworld as were some other secret bases.
Long before the Guild came into power, before the first of the Terrans felt their way along unmapped stellar roads, Waystar had been. It was a port of outlaws, a rendezvous for space pirates when piracy existed. Now it was a meeting place for Jacks, those outlaws who raided sparsely settled planets and installations, and for the Guildmen, who bought the loot from such raids, or hired Jacks at times to carry out some ship plan of their own.
According to the stories, it had once been a space station located in a system now so old its planets were cinders in orbit around an almost dead red dwarf sun. If it were as old as the worlds it companied, or even as old as the life that had once ruled them, it was beyond any reckoning of age by those who now used it. It had, however, in recorded time, such a dark history as to overshadow all speculation. Going to Waystar was like saying one planned to venture into the bowels of Ruhkarv, with perhaps as good a reason to expect the worst thereafter.
“This Mackry—if we go to Waystar—“ Ziantha ventured. Though the Guild did not rule there, their influence would weigh deeply enough so Yasa might be found to be playing traitor. What would happen then? When a veep fell, his or her personal following were also swept away, unless they were extraordinarily fortunate or had secret ties with the one or ones who brought about that downfall.
Yasa smoothed Harath’s downy head, uttered a sound amazingly like the snapping of the creature’s beak.
“Mackry is one who runs hither and thither with messages, is that not so, my soft one?” she asked Harath aloud.
His mind-send was clear. “He tries to find something with which he can cause trouble for you. So far his search has brought nothing. He believes his detect shields him.” There was such a strong note of scorn in that beaming that Ziantha was startled into a question of her own.
“It does not?”
Harath turned his head to look directly at her. Though that seemed an impossible angle for flesh and bone to endure, he held so, his huge eyes unblinking. “Harath can read.” Again he beak-clicked scornfully.
Ziantha had not realized that the alien could penetrate the mind-seals worn as a matter of course by Guild men. She was so inured to the marvels of their techs that she accepted as a fact that such a shield could not be pierced by normal means. But then, of course, Harath was not “normal” by her species’ standards at all.
Then Yasa did have a guard when Harath was with her. Doubtless he could have relayed to the Salarika every thought passing through Mackry’s mind. Or Ziantha’s mind — ! The stone! No, do not think of that! The trouble was when there was something not to be brought to the readable fore of one’s mind, that is the very thought which haunted one. Something else—Waystar—think of Waystar—
Again the Salarika purred. “Harath reads well.” There was warm approval not comment. “And there are those at Waystar before whom, for all his ambition, Mackry would dwindle until he was smaller than our Harath is in body, as he is already smaller in talent and courage.”
“One has to reach Waystar to evoke the backing of such,” Ziantha found the courage to point out.
“One need not put obvious truths into words, cubling. However we have not been idle. Plans were made before Mackry arrived to provide us with cover. But this will not be a luxurious voyage. We must travel in voyage-sleep and a sealed cabin.”
Ziantha wished she dared refuse, though there could not ever be a chance for her to set her will against that of the Salarika. Voyage-sleep and a sealed cabin was primitive travel indeed in these days, generations after the first ships traveled with their crews and passengers in frozen sleep, not knowing if they would ever awaken again. She thought now that perhaps it was not the ruggedness of the accommodations which might force this now ancient process on them, but perhaps the secrecy of Yasa’s plan.
But she was not given much time to worry about possibilities, because by dusk one of Yasa’s private flitters had brought them to the airport where they were escorted on board an inner world liner. Only they did not remain there. For they had no more than stepped within the cabin assigned to them before Yasa whipped two hooded cloaks from her top luggage case. So with distort outer garments they made a circuitous way along empty corridors to a lower hatch and, covered by the dusk and the distorts, swung down to ground level again on a luggage lift.
In spite of her cloak, Ziantha felt vulnerable as she scurried after Yasa across the edge of the landing field and into the shadows. Thus they came to that end of the port where few passenger ships ever sat down, which was reserved for Free Traders and lesser transports. Yasa, without hesitation, seeming to know very well what she sought, caught at Ziantha’s hand and urged her to a faster pace to reach the space-scoured side of a transport on which the name and emblem was so badly worn that in this limited light the girl could make out neither symbol.
The landing ramp was out, but there was no crewman on guard at either end. Again Yasa did not hesitate, but, drawing the girl with her, hurried up into the ship. They met no one. It might have been totally deserted; Ziantha decided there must have been orders given that they not be observed entering.
Yasa climbed three levels, bringing them not far above the cargo holds. Here was an open door which they entered, Yasa closing it quickly behind them.
“Pleasant voyaging, gentle fems.” Ogan leaned against the wall. He looked oddly out of place in a drab uniform of a workman, as he stood guard over two long, narrow chests. Ziantha could not subdue the shiver which ran through her as she threw off the cloak and looked at those, knowing well what ordeal lay before her now. In spite of all that man had learned to make space flight safe, there were always failures, and she had never been off-world that she could remember. Though, of course, like all those in the Dipple, she had originally come to Korwar from some war-swept planet.
“It has gone well so far.” Yasa folded their cloaks small, made pillows of them she stowed in the boxes. “Ziantha, you have the artifact—give it here.”
Because she had no reason to defy that, the girl handed over the container for the lump, which she had held tightly to her during their flight across the port. Yasa stood for a moment with it in her hands. If she had intended to open it, to assure herself their prize was within, she did not do so. Instead she set it with extra care beside one of those cloak-pillows.
Ogan smiled. “How perceptive of you, Lady. Naturally if there is any relation between voyage-sleep and trance it should help. Now, Ziantha, in with you, and if our small mystery can answer any questions while you sleep, you can report it later.”