Star of Danger by Marion Zimmer Bradley

The food was good, small meat rolls stuffed with something like rice or barley; Larry ate hungrily, dipping his rolls in the sharp fruity pickle-sauce as Kennard did. At last he put down the bowl and said, “You told me you’ve been watching me, while I’ve been exploring the city. Why?”

Kennard reached for the bowl containing some small crisp sticky things took a handful and passed them to Larry before answering. He said, “I don’t quite know how to say it without insulting you.”

“Go ahead,” Larry said. “Look, you probably saved me from getting pretty badly hurt, if not killed. Say anything you want to. I’ll try not to take offense.”

“This is nothing against you. But nobody in Thendara wants trouble. Terrans have been mauled or murdered, here in the city. They usually bring it on themselves. I don’t mean that you would have brought anything on yourself—those street boys are alley rats and they’ll attack perfectly harmless people. But other Terrans have made trouble in the city, and our people have treated them as they deserve. So it should be settled—a troublemaker has been punished, and the affair is over. But you Terrans simply will not accept that. Any time one of your people is hurt, no matter what he has done to dererve it, your spaceforce men come around prying into the whole matter, raking up a scandal insisting on long trials and questioning and punishment. On Darkover, any man who’s man enough to wear breeches instead of skirts is supposed to be able to protect himself; and if he can’t, it’s an affair for his family to settle. Our people find it hard to understand your ways. But we have made a treaty with the Terrans, and responsible people here in the city don’t want trouble. So we try to prevent incidents of that sort—when we can do it honorably.”

Larry munched absentmindedly on one of the sweet things. They were filled with tart fruit, like little pies. He was beginning to see the contrast between his own world—orderly, with impersonal laws—and Darkover, with a fierce and individualistic code of every man for himself. When the two clashed—

“But it was more than that,” Kennard said. “I was curious about you. I’ve been curious about you since the first day I saw you at the spaceport. Most of you Terrans like to stay behind your walls—they won’t even take the trouble to learn our language! Why are you different?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why they are the way they are, either. Just—well, call it curiosity.” Something else occurred to Larry. “So you didn’t just happen to come along then? You’ve been watching me?”

“Off and on. But it was just luck I came along then. I was off duty and coming home, and heard the racket in the square. And, on duty or off, that’s part of my work.”

“Your work?”

Kennard said, “I’m a cadet officer in the City Guard. All the boys in my family start as cadets, when they’re fourteen winters old, working three days in the cycle as peace officers. Mostly, I just supervise guards and check over the duty lists. What sort of work do you do?”

“I don’t do any work yet. I just go to school.” It made him feel, suddenly, very young and ill at ease. This self-possessed youngster, no older than Larry himself, was already doing a man’s work—not frittering his time away, being treated like a schoolboy!

“And then you have to start in doing your man’s work full time, without any training? How strange,” Kennard said.

“Well, your system seems strange to me,” Larry said, with a flare of resentment against Kennard’s assumption that his way was the proper one, and Kennard grinned at him.

“Actually, I had another reason for wanting to get to know you—and if this hadn’t happened, sooner or later I suppose I’d have managed it somehow. I’m wild to know all about space travel and the stars! And I’ve never had a chance to learn anything about it! Tell me—how do the Big Ships find their way between stars? What moves the ships? Do the Terrans really have colonies on hundreds of worlds?”

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