Uncharted Stars Read online

  Eet, once more in his own form, curled up on the second hammock, allowing me to navigate unhindered as we went in. As the landscape became more distinct on the view-plate I saw that its ocher color was due to trees, or rather giant, lacy growths, waving fronds with delicate trunks hardly thicker than my two fists together. They were perhaps twenty or thirty feet tall and swayed and tossed as if they were constantly swept by wind. In color they shaded from a bright rust-brown to a pale green-yellow with brighter tints of reddish tan between. And they seemed to grow uniformly across the ground, with no sign of any clearing where the LB might set down. I had no desire to crash into the growth, which might be far tougher than it looked, and I went on hand controls to cruise above it, searching vainly for some break. So untouched was that willowy expanse that I had about decided my choice of island had been wrong and that we must head south to investigate the other.

  Now the fronds gave way from taller to shorter. Then there was a stretch of red sand in which the sunlight awoke points of sharp glitter. This was washed by the green waves of the sea, and such green I had only seen in the flawless surface of a fine Terran emerald.

  At this point the beach was wide and in the middle of it was my first signpost, a broad blot of glassified sand blasted by deter rockets, a ship’s landing place. I guided the LB past that a little along the fringe of the growth, bringing it down under the overhang of vegetation with a care of which I was rightfully proud. Unless that mark had been left by a scout, I should be able to find traces of the archaeological camp not too far away, or so I hoped.

  The atmosphere was breathable without a helmet. But I took with me something Ryzk had put together. We might not be allowed lasers or stunners, but the former Free Trader had patiently created a weapon of his own, a spring gun which shot needle darts. And those darts were tipped with my contribution, made from zorans too flawed to use, cut with a jeweler’s tool, and deadly.

  I have used a laser and a stunner, but this, at close range, was to my mind an even deadlier weapon, and only the thought that I might have to front a Jack crew prepared me to carry it. Those in space learned long ago that the first instinct of our species, to attack that which is strange as being also dangerous, could not be allowed to influence us. And in consequence, mind blocks were set on the first explorers. Such precautions continued until those who were explorers and colonizers became inhibited against instant hostility. But there were times when we still needed arms, mainly against our own species.

  The stunner with its temporary effect on the opponent was the approved weapon. The laser was strictly a war choice and outlawed for most travelers. But as a former Patrol suspect, I could not have my permit to carry either renewed for a year. I was a “pardoned” man, pardoned for an offense I never committed—something they conveniently forgot. And I had no wish to demand a permit and give them some form of control over me again.

  Now that I dropped out of the LB, Eet riding on my shoulder, I was very glad Ryzk had found such an arm. Not that this seemed a hostile world. The sun was bright and warm but not burning hot. And the breeze which kept the fronds ever in play was gentle, carrying with it a scent which would have made a Salarik swoon in delight. From ground level I could see that the trunks of those fronds had smaller branches and those bent under the weight of brilliant scarlet flowers rimmed with gold and bronze. Insects buzzed thickly about these.

  The soil was a mixture of red sand and a darker brown earth where the beach gave way to forested land. But I kept to the edge between sand and wood, angling along until I was opposite that patch of glass formed by the heat of the rockets at some ship’s fin-down.

  There I discovered what had not been visible from above, covered by the trees and vegetation—a path back into the interior of the forest. I am no scout, but elementary caution suggested that I not walk that road openly. However, I soon found that forcing a passage along parallel to the route was difficult. The clusters of flowers beat against my head and shoulders, loosing an overpowering scent, which, pleasant as it was, became a cloying, choking fog when close to the nose. That and a shower of floury, rust-yellow pollen which made the skin itch where it settled finally forced me into the path.

  Though fronds had been cut down to open that way, yet the press of the thick growth had spread out overhead to again roof in the channel, providing a dusky, cooling shade. On some of the trees the clusters of flowers were gone and pods hung there, pulling the trunks well out of line with their weight.

  The path ran straight, and in the ground underfoot were the marks of robo-carriers. But if the camp had been so well established, why had I not been able to sight it from the air as the LB had passed overhead? Certainly they must have cut down enough fronds to make a clearing for their bubble tents.

  Suddenly the trail dipped, leaving rising banks on either side. They had not had to cut a path here, for the earth had been scraped away by their carriers to show a pavement, while the fronds growing on the bank spread to cover the cut completely.

  I knelt to examine the pavement, sure that it had been set of a purpose a long time ago, that it was no fortuitous rock shelf. Thus the banks on either hand might well be walls long covered by earth.

  The passage continued to deepen and narrow, growing darker and more chill as I went. I slowed my advance to a creep, trying to listen, though the constant sighing of the wind through the fronds might cover any sound.

  “Eet?” Finally, out of a need for more than my own five senses, I appealed to my companion.

  “Nothing—” His head was raised, swaying slowly from side to side. “This is an old place, very old. There have been men here—” Then he stopped short and I could feel his small body tense against mine.

  “What is it?”

  “Death smell—there is death ahead.”

  I had my weapon ready. “Danger for us?”

  “No, not now. But death here—”

  The cut had now led underground, the earth lips closing the slit above, and what lay ahead was totally dark. I had a belt beamer, but to use it might bring on us the very attention which would be danger.

  “Is there anyone here?” I demanded of Eet as I halted, unwilling to enter that pocket of utter black.

  “Gone,” Eet told me. “But not long ago. And—no—there is a trace of life, very faint. I think someone still lives—a little—”

  Eet’s answer was obscure, and I did not know whether we dared go on.

  “No danger to us,” he flashed. “I read pain—no thoughts of anger or of waiting our coming—”

  I dared then to trigger the beamer, which flashed on stone walls. The blocks had been so set together that only the faintest of lines marked their joining, with no trace of mortar at all, only a sheen on their surface, as if their natural roughness had been either polished away or given a slick coating. They were a dull red in hue, a shade unpleasantly reminiscent of blood.

  As we advanced the space widened, the walls almost abruptly expanding on either side to give one the feeling of being on the verge of some vast underground chamber. But my beamer had picked up something else, a tangle of wrecked gear which had been thrown about, burned by lasers. It was as if a battle had been fought in this space.

  And there were bodies—

  The too-sweet scent of the flowers was gone, lost in the stomach-twisting stench of seared flesh and blood—until I wanted to reel out of that hole into the clean open.

  Then I heard it, not so much a moan as a kind of hissing plaint, with that in it which I could not refuse to answer. I detoured around the worst of the shambles to a place near the wall where something had crawled, leaving a ghastly trail of splotches on the floor that glistened evilly in the beam ray.

  It was a Zacathan and he had not been burned down in a surprise attack as had the others I had caught glimpses of amid the chaos of the camp. No, this was such treatment as only the most sadistic and barbaric tribe of some backward planet might have dealt a battle slave.

  That he still lived was
indicative of the strong bodies of his species. That he would continue to live I greatly doubted. But I would do all I could for him.

  I summoned up determination enough to search through the welter of the camp until I found their medical supplies. Even these had been smashed about. In fact, the whole mess suggested either a wild hunt for something hidden or else destruction for the mere sake of wanton pillage.

  One who roves space must learn a little of first aid and what I knew I applied now to the wounded Zacathan, though I had no idea of how one treated alien ills. But I did my best and left him what small comfort I could before I went to look about the chamber. To take him back to the LB I needed some form of transportation and the camp trail had the marks of robo-carriers. I had not seen any such machines among the wreckage, which might mean they were somewhere in the dark.

  I found one at last, its nose smashed against the wall at the far end of that space as if it had been allowed to run on its own until the stone barrier halted it. But beside it was something else, a dark opening where stones had been taken out of the wall, piled carefully to one side.

  Curiosity was strong and I pushed in through that slit and flashed the beamer. There was no mistaking the purpose of the crypt. It had been a tomb. Against the wall facing me was a projecting stone outline, still walled up. Instead of being set horizontally as might be expected of a tomb, it was vertical, so that what lay buried there must stand erect.

  There were shelves, but all of them were now bare. And I could imagine that what had stood there once had been taken to the camp and was now Jack loot. I had been too late. Perhaps he who had dealt with Tacktile had not known that the raid was already a fact, or had chosen to suppress that knowledge.

  I returned to the carrier. In spite of the force with which it had rammed the wall it was still operative, and I put it in low gear, so that it crawled, with a squeal of protesting metal, back to the Zacathan. Since he was both taller and heavier than I, it was an effort to load his inert body on the top of the machine. But fortunately he did not regain consciousness and I thought one of the balms Eet had suggested I employ had acted as an anesthetic.

  There was no use searching the wreckage. It was very plain that the raiders had found what they came for. But the wanton smashing was something I did not understand—unless Jacks were a different breed of thief from the calmly efficient Guild.

  “Can you run the carrier?” I asked Eet. It obeyed a simple set of buttons, usable, I believed, by his hand-paws. And if he could run it I would be free to act as guard. Though I thought the Jacks had taken off, there was no sense in not being on the alert.

  “Easy enough.” He leaped to squat behind the controls, starting the machine, though it still complained noisily.

  We reached the LB without picking up any sign that the raiders had lingered here or that there were any other survivors of the archaeological party. Getting the Zacathan into the hammock of the craft was an exhausting job. But I did it at last and flipped the automatic return which would take us to the Wendwind.

  With Ryzk’s help I carried the wounded survivor to one of the lower cabins. The pilot surveyed my improvised treatment closely and at last nodded.

  “Best we can do for him. These boys are tough. They walk away from crashes that would pulp one of us. What happened down there?”

  I described what I had found—the opened tomb, the wreckage of the camp.

  “They must have made a real find. Now there’s something worth more than all your gem hunting, even if you made a major strike! Forerunner stuff—must have been,” Ryzk said eagerly.

  The Zacathans are the historians of the galaxy. Being exceptionally long-lived by our accounting of planet years, they have a bent for the keeping of records, the searching out of the source of legends and the archaeological support for such legends. They knew of several star-wide empires which had risen and fallen again before they themselves had come into space. But there were others about whom even the Zacathans knew very little, for the dust of time had buried deep all but the faintest hints.

  When we Terrans first came into the star lanes we were young compared to many worlds. We found ruins, degenerate races close to extinction, traces over and over again of those who had proceeded us, risen to heights we had not yet dreamed of seeking, then crashed suddenly or withered slowly away. The Forerunners, the first explorers had called them. But there were many Forerunners, not just of one empire or species, and those Forerunners had Forerunners until the very thought of such lost ages could make a man’s head whirl.

  But Forerunner artifacts were indeed finds to make a man wealthy beyond everyday reckoning. My father had shown me a few pieces, bracelets of dark metal meant to fit arms which were not of human shape, odds and ends. He had treasured these, speculated about them, until all such interest had centered upon the zero stone. Zero stone—I had seen the ruins with the caches of these stones. Had there been any in this tomb which the Zacathans had explored? Or was this merely another branch of limitless history, having no connection with the Forerunner who had used the stones as sources of fantastic energy?

  “The Jacks have it all now anyway,” I observed. We had rescued a Zacathan who might well die before we could get him to any outpost of galactic civilization, that was all.

  “We did not miss them by too much,” Ryzk said. “A ship just took off from the south island—caught it on radar as it cut atmosphere.”

  So they might have set down there and used a flitter to carry out the raid—which meant they had either scouted the camp carefully or had a straight tip about it. Then what Ryzk had said reached my inner alarms.

  “You picked them up—could they have picked us up in return?”

  “If they were looking. Maybe they thought we were a supply ship and that’s why they cut out so fast. In any case, they will not be coming back if they have what they wanted.”

  No, they would be too anxious to get their loot into safe hiding. Zacathans, armed with telepathic powers, did not make good enemies, and I thought that the Jacks who had pulled this raid must be very sure of a safe hiding place at some point far from any port or they would not have attempted it at all.

  “Makes you think of Waystar,” commented Ryzk. “Sort of job those pirates would pull.”

  A year earlier I would have thought Ryzk subscribing to a legend, one of the tall tales of space. But my own experience, when Eet had informed me that the Free Traders who had taken me off Tanth, apparently to save my life after Vondar’s murder, had intended to deliver me at Waystar, had given credibility to the story. At least the crew of that Free Trader had believed in the port to which I had been secretly consigned.

  But Ryzk’s casual mention of it suddenly awoke my suspicions. I had had that near-fatal brush with one Free Trader crew who had operated on the shady fringe of the Guild. Could I now have taken on board a pilot who was also too knowing of the hidden criminal base? And was Ryzk—had he been planted?

  It was Eet who saved me from speculation and suspicion which might have been crippling then.

  “No. He is not what you fear. He knows of Waystar through report only.”

  “He”—I indicated the unconscious Zacathan—“might just as well write off his find then.”

  My try at re-establishing our credit had failed, unless the Zacathan lived long enough for us to get him to some port. Then perhaps the gratitude of his House might work in my favor. Perhaps a cold-blooded measuring of assistance to a fellow intelligent being. Only I was so ridden by my ever-present burden of worry that it was very much a part of my thinking—though I would not have deserted any living thing found in that plundered camp.

  I appealed to Ryzk for the co-ordinates to the nearest port. But, though he searched through the computer for any clue as to where we were, he finally could only suggest return to Lylestane. We were off any chart he knew of and to try an unreckoned jump through hyper was a chance no one took, except a First-in Scout as part of his usual duty.

  But we did not
decide the matter, for as we were arguing it out Eet broke into our dispute to say that our passenger had regained consciousness.

  “Leave it up to him,” I said. “The Zacathans must have co-ordinates from some world to reach here. And if he can remember those, we can return him to his home base. Best all around—”

  However, I was not at all sure that the alien, as badly wounded as he was, could guide us. Yet a return to Lylestane was for me a retracing of a way which might well lead to more and more trouble. If he died and we turned up with only his body on board, who would believe our story of the Jacked camp? It could be said that we had been responsible for the raid. My thinking was beoming more and more torturous the deeper I went into the muddle. It seemed that nothing had really gone right for me since I had taken the zero stone from its hiding place in my father’s room, that each move I made, always hoping for the best, simply pushed me deeper into trouble.

  Eet flashed down the ladder at a greater speed than we could make. And we found him settled by the head of the bed we had improvised for the wounded alien. The latter had his bandaged head turned a little, was watching the mutant with his one good eye. That they were conversing telepathically was clear. But their mental wave length was not mine, and when I tried to listen in, the sensation was like that of hearing a muttering of voices at the far side of the room, a low sound which did not split into meaning.

  As I came from behind Eet the Zacathan looked up, his eye meeting mine.

  “Zilwrich thanks you, Murdoc Jern.” His thoughts had a sonorous dignity. “The little one tells me that you have the mind-touch. How is it that you came before the last flutters of my life were done?”

  I answered him aloud so Ryzk could also understand, telling in as few words as possible about our overhearing of the Jack plot, and why and how we had come to the amber world.