There was a tap-tapping of jeweler’s hammers in my skull, setting tighter and tighter a brazen band about my brain. I could not lift a hand to stop that torment. Then liquid splashed over me and I drew a choking gasp of air, which seemed to subdue for the moment the worst of the hammering. I opened my eyes.
A face hung over me, two faces, one very close, the other blurry and at a greater distance. The close one was furred, with pricked, tassled ears, green-gold eyes. It opened a blacklipped mouth and I looked into a wedge-shaped space set with fangs, and a curling, roughsurfaced tongue. It was a small face-
Now the larger approached and I tried to focus on it. Spacetanned, with close-cropped hair, for the rest the face of any crewman, ageless and now expressionless.
I heard words-“Well, so you are back with us-“
Back? Back where? Memory stirred sluggishly – back in the cell of the sanctuary? No! I tried to sit up and my head whirled so that I was sick. But as ungentle hands thrust me flat again, I felt something else which could never have vibrated through Koongan walls – I was not only aboard a ship, but we were in flight. And the vast flood of relief which followed that realization carried me back into a limbo which was half unconsciousness, half sleep.
So I found myself aboard the Vestris, though the first days in her were not the usual spent by a passenger. The Cargo Master had indeed knocked me out to carry me aboard as his drunken assistant. But it would seem I was of less hardy structure than those his fists had dealt with heretofore, and I continued semiconscious for a longer space than the medico liked. When I was again fully aware of my surroundings, I lay in a cramped cubby off the medico’s cabin, used by the seriously ill. It was some time before I had my interview with Captain Isuran. Like all Free Traders, he was ship-born, shipbred, of a type growing more and more apart from planetorientated men. All the Free Traders I had known before had been only casual acquaintances, and I found myself oddly ill at ease with these in such close quarters. I told him my story and he listened. And he asked who had wanted Vondar Ustle dead, but that I could not tell him. That there had been some tie in the past between my master and this Captain, I was sure. But Isuran did not explain and I dared not ask questions. It was enough that he would take me to another world, one on which I could contact sources who had known me as Vondar’s assistant.
I had some time to meditate upon the future, for space travel is sheer monotony once one is off world. The crewmen develop hobbies to occupy mind and hand. For me there was nothing but my thoughts. And they were not so pleasant I cared to dwell long upon them.
Ustle had had contacts on many worlds, and I thought one or two might be willing to give me a chance at a planetside job. But, though I knew gems as a buyer, I was no designer, nor did I want a settled existence. I had tasted too deeply of Vondar’s way of life. My safe-belt was very light now. And I would have to reach a second-stage port to tap past resources for expense money. Also – my savings were limited. I could not keep on as we had done alone. And there were very few, if any, Vondar Ustles in search of apprentices.
Also – what had been behind Vondar’s death? That it was planned and not by the Green Robes alone, I had come to accept. But, though I tried – sifting memories – I could not bring to mind a single happening which would plant so deep a reason for someone to wish him dead. And perhaps not only him, for the Green Robes had moved in on both of us.
This was the second time death had abruptly come so close to me. I thought again of my father, or of him I would always think of as my father, for he had treated me as of his own flesh and blood and had settled for me (knowing as he must have how matters would go after his death) a future he thought would be the best. Who had been his visitor that day? And the space ring – my hand sought the last and deepest pocket of my safe-belt. I did not unseal it, only felt through it the shape of the band and that lusterless stone. Was I right that this was what my father’s killer had sought? If so – could it also be-? I did not see how this could have followed us to Tanth. All the property on the bodies of their victims belonged to the Green Robes and were offered to their dead demon. No one but their order would have had the ring had I fallen prey to them.
I had a handful of facts and could go on endlessly building many surmises, without ever being sure that any were close to the truth. Although in the meanwhile I must seek some way of earning my living, I would, in time, have to learn what lay behind Vondar’s killing. For I had such ties with him as would indeed demand the equivalent of the Free Traders’ knife-oath.
But I was still far from the solution of my twin problems when the Vestris prepared for a landing, not on the planet at which I aimed, but on a lesser world. Cargo Master Ostrend briefed me as to their reasons for the landfall. It was a lushly overgrown land, overwarm, too, to our tastes, with a nonhuman, batrachian-evolved native race. What those had to barter was a substance strained and fermented from certain plants, medicinal in nature. What the Vestris gave in return was seed shellfish, to be loosed in beds, considered a great delicacy.
“You might be interested in these.” Ostrend took from his lockbox three objects and set them out on the top of his swing desk.
They were a pinkish purple in shade, and each was a tiny figure. I brought out my jeweler’s lens to study them closer. Figures they were, as weirdly grotesque as any of the demons dreamed up by the imaginations of the artists of Tanth. They seemed to be fashioned of nacre, though not carved. I had not seen their like before. They were oddities which might appeal to collectors of the curious.
“There is a planter of shellfish beds – Salmscar. He has been experimenting with some of the mutated crustaceans. That’s what keeps our trade going here; the things mutate so quickly that they cannot be bred true past about the second year. He plants tiny metallic ‘seeds’ in the mutants and in about three or four years gets these. Just a hobby with him. But you might do a spot of trading if you are interested.”
I knew the Free Traders and their jealously guarded sources of items. If the mutant pearls had any value, Ostrend would not have made that suggestion. Unless, of course, he was either testing me or setting a trap – now I saw dangers standing to right and left. It was almost as if he were urging me to break their ship law. But I would not tell him so. A very small third mystery to add to the others. I expressed interest, which I did not have to feign, and did wonder what I had that I could offer for some of the things – not that I could use my few assets on a gamble, nor would I attempt any trade without full consent of my present shipmates.
FOUR
Since the ingrown community of the Free Traders was a closed clan and an outsider remained that, I was left very much to my own company, save for one member of the crew. The furry face which had hung so close to mine at my first awakening was one I was to see again and again. For Valcyr, the ship’s cat, apparently decided that I was an object of interest second to none, and spent long periods of time crouched on bunk or floor of the cabin allotted to me, simply staring.
I was not used to companionship with animals and at first her attentions irked me, for I could not throw off the absurd feeling that behind those round, seldomblinking eyes was a mind which marked my every move, sifting and assessing me and all I did. Yet in time I came to tolerate her, and finally, when it became apparent that the crew were not inclined, beyond a distant civility, to friendliness, I found myself talking to her for want of other conversation. For among themselves the Traders spoke a language of their own, unintelligible to me so that any attempt to follow their speech was fruitless.