The Star Hyacinths
[Editor’s note: Although Telzey herself does not appear in this story, the hero is the same Wellan Dasinger who figures so prominently in her various adventures.]
The two wrecked spaceships rested almost side by side near the tip of a narrow, deep arm of a great lake.
The only man on the planet sat on a rocky ledge three miles uphill from the two ships, gazing broodingly down at them. He was a big fellow in neatly patched shipboard clothing. His hands were clean, his face carefully shaved. He had two of the castaway’s traditional possessions with him: a massive hunting bow rested against the rocks, and a minor representative of the class of life which was this world’s equivalent of birds was hopping about near his feet. This was a thrush-sized creature with a jaunty bearing and bright yellow eyes. From the front of its round face protruded a short, narrow tube tipped with small, sharp teeth. Round, horny knobs at the ends of its long toes protected retractile claws as it bounded back and forth between the bow and the man, giving a quick flutter of its wings on each bound. Finally it stopped before the man, stretching its neck to stare up at him, trying to catch his attention.
He roused from his musing, glanced irritably down at it.
“Not now, Birdie,” he said. “Keep quiet!”
The man’s gaze returned to the two ships, then passed briefly along a towering range of volcanoes on the other side of the lake, and lifted to the cloudless blue sky. His eyes probed on, searching the sunlit, empty vault above him. If a ship ever came again, it would come from there, the two wrecks by the lake arm already fixed in its detectors; it would not come gliding along the surface of the planet.
Birdie produced a sharp, plaintive whistle. The man looked at it.
“Shut up, stupid!” he told it.
He reached into the inner pocket of his coat, took out a small object wrapped in a piece of leather, and unfolded the leather.
Then it lay in his cupped palm, and blazed with the brilliance of twenty diamonds, seeming to flash the fires of the spectrum furiously from every faceted surface, without ever quite subduing the pure violet luminance which made a star hyacinth impossible to imitate or, once seen, to forget. The most beautiful of gems, the rarest, the most valuable. The man who was a castaway stared at it for long seconds, his breath quickening and his hand beginning to tremble. Finally he folded the chip of incredible mineral back into the leather, replaced it carefully in his pocket.
When he looked about again, the sunlit air seemed brighter, the coloring of lake and land more vivid and alive. Once during each of this world’s short days, but no oftener, he permitted himself to look at the star hyacinth. It was a ritual adhered to with almost religious strictness, and it had kept him as sane as he was ever likely to be again, for over six years.
It might, he sometimes thought, keep him sane until a third ship presently came along to this place. And then . . .
The third ship was coming along at that moment, still some five hours’ flight out from the system. She was a small ship with lean, rakish lines, a hot little speedster, gliding placidly through subspace just now, her engines throttled down.
Aboard her, things were less peaceful.
* * *
The girl was putting up a pretty good fight but getting nowhere with it against the bull-necked Fleetman who had her pinned back against the wall.
Wellan Dasinger paused in momentary indecision at the entrance to the half-darkened control section of the speedboat. The scuffle in there very probably was none of his business. The people of the roving Independent Fleets had their own practices and mores and resented interference from uninformed planet dwellers. For all Dasinger knew, their blue-eyed lady pilot enjoyed roughhousing with the burly members of her crew. If the thing wasn’t serious. . . .
He heard the man rap out something in the Willata Fleet tongue, following the words up with a solid thump of his fist into the girl’s side. The thump hadn’t been playful, and her sharp gasp of pain indicated no enjoyment whatever. Dasinger stepped quickly into the room.
He saw the girl turn startled eyes toward him as he came up behind the man. The man was Liu Taunus, the bigger of the two crew members . . . too big and too well muscled by a good deal, in fact, to make a sportsmanlike suggestion to divert his thumpings to Dasinger look like a sensible approach. Besides, Dasinger didn’t know the Willata Fleet’s language. The edge of his hand slashed twice from behind along the thick neck; then his fist brought the breath whistling from Taunus’ lungs before the Fleetman had time to turn fully towards him.
It gave Dasinger a considerable starting advantage. During the next twenty seconds or so the advantage seemed to diminish rapidly. Taunus’s fists and boots had scored only near misses so far, but he began to look like the hardest big man to chop down Dasinger had yet run into. And then the Fleetman was suddenly sprawling on the floor, face down, arms flung out limply, a tough boy with a thoroughly bludgeoned nervous system.
Dasinger was straightening up when he heard the thunk of the wrench. He turned sharply, discovered first the girl standing ten feet away with the wrench in her raised hand, next their second crew member lying on the carpet between them, finally the long, thin knife lying near the man’s hand.
“Thanks, Miss Mines!” he said, somewhat out of breath. “I really should have remembered Calat might be somewhere around.”
Duomart Mines gestured with her head at the adjoining control cabin. “He was in there,” she said, also breathlessly. She was a long-legged blonde with a limber way of moving, pleasing to look at in her shaped Fleet uniform, though with somewhat aloof and calculating eyes. In the dim light of the room she seemed to be studying Dasinger now with an expression somewhere between wariness and surprised speculation. Then, as he took a step forward to check on Calat’s condition, she backed off slightly, half lifting the wrench again.
Dasinger stopped and looked at her. “Well,” he said, “make up your mind! Whose side are you on here?”
Miss Mines hesitated, let the wrench down. “Yours, I guess,” she acknowledged. “I’d better be, now! They’d murder me for helping a planeteer.”
* * *
Dasinger went down on one knee beside Calat, rather cautiously though the Fleetman wasn’t stirring, and picked up the knife. Miss Mines turned up the room’s lights. Dasinger asked, “What was this . . . a mutiny? You’re technically in charge of the ship, aren’t you?”
“Technically,” she agreed, added, “We were arguing about a Fleet matter.”
“I see. We’ll call it mutiny.” Dasinger checked to be sure Calat wasn’t faking unconsciousness. He inquired, “Do you really need these boys to help you?”
Duomart Mines shook her blond head. “Not at all. Flying the Mooncat is a one-man job.”
“I did have a feeling,” Dasinger admitted, “that Willata’s Fleet was doing a little featherbedding when they said I’d have to hire a crew of three to go along with their speedboat.”
“Uh-huh.” Her tone was noncommittal. “They were. What are you going to do with them?”
“Anywhere they can be locked up safely?”
“Not safely. Their own cabin’s as good as anything. They can batter their way out of here if they try hard enough. Of course we’d hear them doing it.”
“Well, we can fix that.” Dasinger stood up, fished his cabin key out of a pocket and gave it to her. “Tan suitcase standing at the head of my bunk,” he said. “Mind bringing that and the little crane from the storeroom up here?”
Neither of the Fleetman had begun to stir when Duomart Mines came riding a gravity crane back in through the door a couple of minutes later, the suitcase dangling in front of her. She halted the crane in the center of the room, slid out of its saddle with a supple twist of her body, and handed Dasinger his cabin key.
“Thanks.” Dasinger took the suitcase from the crane, unlocked and opened it. He brought out a pair of plastic handcuffs, aware that Miss Mines stood behind him making an intent scrutiny of what could be seen of the suitcase’s contents. He didn’t blame her for feeling curious; she was looking at a variety of devices which might have delighted the eyes of both a professional burglar and military spy. She offered no comment.
Neither did Dasinger. He hauled Liu Taunus over on his back, fastened handcuffs about the Fleetman’s wrists, then rolled him over on his face again. He did the same for Calat, hung the suitcase back in the crane, slung a leg across the crane’s saddle and settled into it.