The roll of wire was a very thin one. Not much known of Fronn. He ducked into the nearest booth, inserted the wire in the machine there, and put aside his helmet to adjust the impression band on his temples. A second later he drifted off to sleep, the information in the pak being fed to his memory cells.
It was a quarter of an hour later when he roused. So that was Fronn—not a particularly inviting world. And the pak had only sketched in meager details. But he now possessed all the knowledge the archives listed.
Kana sighed ruefully—that climate meant a tour in the pressure chamber during the voyage. The assignment officer had not mentioned that. Pressure chamber and water acclimation both. Serve him right for not asking more questions before he signed. He only hoped that he wasn’t going to be sick for the whole trip.
When he went up to return the pak he met a Mechneer standing by the selector—an impatient Mech whistling tunelessly between his teeth, playing with the buckle of his blaster belt. He was only slightly older than Kana but he carried himself with the arrogant assurance of a man who had made at least two missions, an arrogance few real veterans displayed.
Kana glanced back at the booths. He had been the only occupant, so what was the Mech waiting there for? He dropped the pak on the return belt, but, as he reached the door, its polished surface reflected a strange sight. The Mech had scooped up the pak on Fronn before it vanished into the bin.
Fronn was a primitive world, a class five planet. Any Combatant force employed there must be, by Central Control regulations, an Arch Horde, trained and conditioned for so-called hand-to-hand fighting, their most modern weapon a stat-rifle. No mechanized unit would be sent to Fronn where their blasters, crawlers, spouters would be outlawed. So why should a Mech be interested in learning about that world?
Idle curiosity about planets on which one could not serve was not indulged among Combatants. It was about all one could do to absorb the information one could actually use.
Now Kana wished that he had had a closer look at the thin face which had been so shadowed by the bubble helmet. Puzzled and somewhat disturbed he went on to the commissary to lay in the personal supplies his new knowledge of Fronn suggested it wise to buy.
Wistfully he regarded and then refused a sleeping bag of Uzakian spider silk lined with worstle temperature moss. And the gauntlets of karab skin which the supply corpsman tried to sell him were as quickly pushed aside. Such luxuries were for the veteran with enough treasure riding his belt to afford a buying spree. Kana must thriftily settle for a second-hand Cambra bag—a short jacket of sasti hide, fur-lined and with a parka hood and gloves attached, and some odd medicament and toilet articles, in all a very modest outfit which could easily be added to the contents of his war bag. And when he settled the bill he still had left four credits of his muster allowance.
The corpsman deftly rolled his purchases into a bundle. “Looks like you’re heading to some cold place, fella,” he commented.
“To Fronn.”
The man grinned. “Never heard of the place. Back of nowhere—sounds like to me. Look out they don’t stick a spear in you from behind some bush. Those nowhere guys play rough. But then you guys do too, don’t you?” He stared knowingly at Kana’s Arch uniform. “Yessir, kinda rough, slugging it out the way you do. Me, I’d rather have me a blaster and be a Mech—”
“Then you’d face another fighter with a blaster of his own,” Kana pointed out as he reached for the bundle.
“Have it your own way, fella.” The corpsman lost interest as a be-jeweled veteran approached.
Kana recognized in the newcomer the man who had preceded him to the assignment officer’s cubby. Was he, too, bound for Yorke Horde and Fronn? When the spider silk sleeping bag was slapped down on the counter for his inspection, and other supplies similar to Kana’s modest selection piled on it, he was reasonably sure that guess was correct.
At sixteen and a half hours the recruit stood beside his bag in the waiting section of Dock Five. So far he was alone save for the corpsmen who had business there and two spacer crewmen lounging at the far end. To have arrived so early was the badge of a greenie, but he was too excited under his impassive exterior to sit and wait elsewhere. It was twenty to seventeen before his future teammates began to straggle in. And ten minutes later they were swung up on the carry platform to the hatch of the troopship. Checking his armlet against the muster roll, the ship’s officer waved Kana on. Within five minutes he entered a cabin for two, wondering which of the bunks was his to strap down on.
“Well”—a voice behind him exploded in a boom—“either get in or get out! This is no time to sleep on watch, recruit! Haven’t you ever spaced before?”
Kana crowded back against the wall, snatching his bag away from the boots of the newcomer.
“Up there!” With an impatient snort his cabin mate pitched the younger man’s bag up on the top bunk.
Kana swung up and investigated. Sure enough, a small knob twisted, and a section of the wall opened to display a recess which would accommodate his belongings. The rich note of a gong interrupted his exploration. At that signal the veteran loosened his belts and his helmet, putting them aside. And Kana hurriedly followed suit. One bong—first warning—
He stretched out on the bunk and fumbled for the straps which must be buckled. Under the weight of his body the foam pad spread a little. He knew that he could take acceleration—that was one of the first tests given a recruit in training. And he had been on field maneuvers on Mars and the Moon—but this was his first venture into deep space. Kana smoothed his tunic across his middle and waited for the third warning to announce the actual blastoff.
It had been a long time since Terrans had first reached toward other worlds. Three hundred years since the first recorded pioneer flight into the Galaxy. And even before that there were legends of other ships fleeing the nuclear wars and the ages of political and social confusion which followed. They must have been either very desperate or very brave, those first explorers—sending their ships out into the unknown while they were wrapped in cold sleep with one chance in perhaps a thousand of waking as their craft approached another planet. With the use of Galactic overdrive such drastic chances were no longer necessary. But had his kind paid too high a price for their swifter passage from star to star?
Though a Combatant did not openly question the dictates of authority or the status quo, Kana knew that he was by no means alone in his discontent with Terra’s role. What would have happened to his species if, when they had made that first historic flight, they had not met with the established, superior force of Central Control? According to their Galactic masters the potentials of the Terran mind, body and temperament fitted them for only one role in the careful pattern of space. Born with an innate will to struggle, they were ordered to supply mercenaries for the other planets. Because the C.C. psycho-techneers believed that they were best suited to combat, their planet and system had been arbitrarily geared to war. And Terrans accepted the situation because of a promise C.C. had made—a promise the fulfillment of which seemed farther in the future every year—that when they were ready for a more equal citizenship it would be granted them.
But what if Central Control had not existed? Would the Agents’ repeated argument have proved true? Would the Terrans, unchecked, have pulled planet after planet into a ruthless struggle for power? Kana was sure that was a lie. But now if a Terran wanted the stars, if the desire for new and strange knowledge burned in him—he could buy it only by putting on the Combatant’s sword.
A giant hand squeezed Kana’s rib case against laboring lungs. He forgot everything in a fight for breath. They had blasted off.
2 — FIRST TESTING
Kana must have blacked out, for when he was again aware of his surroundings he saw that his cabin mate was maneuvering across their quarters, getting his “space legs” in the weak gravity maintained in the living sections of the ship. Lacking his helmet, his tunic open halfway down his broad chest, the veteran had lost some of his awe-inspiring aura. He might now be one of the hard-visaged instructors Kana had known for more than half his short life.
Space tan on a naturally dark skin made him almost black. His coarse hair had been shaved and trimmed into the ridge scalp lock favored by most Terrans. He moved with a tell-tale feline litheness and Kana decided that he would not care to match swords with him in any point-free contest. Now he turned suddenly as if sensing Kana’s appraising stare.