Plague Ship Page 4

  Chapter IV

  GORP HUNT

  But the interruption had disturbed the tenor of trading. The small chiefwho had so eagerly taken Paft's place had only two Koros stones to offerand even to Dane's inexperienced eyes they were inferior in size andcolor to those the other clan leader had tendered. The Terrans were awarethat Koros mining was a dangerous business but they had not known thatthe stock of available stones was so very small. Within ten minutes thelast of the serious bargaining was concluded and the clansmen weredrifting away from the burned over space about the Queen's standing fins.

  Dane folded up the bargain cloth, glad for a task. He sensed that he wasfar from being back in Van Rycke's good graces. The fact that hissuperior did not discuss any of the aspects of the deals with him was abad sign.

  Captain Jellico stretched. Although his was not, or never, what might betermed a good-humored face, he was at peace with his world. "That wouldseem to be all. What's the haul, Van?"

  "Ten first class stones, about fifty second grade, and twenty or so ofthird. The chiefs will go to the fisheries tomorrow. _Then_ we'll be into see the really good stuff."

  "And how's the herbs holding out?" That interested Dane too. Surely thefew plants in the hydro and the dried leaves could not be stretched toofar.

  "As well as we could expect." Van Rycke frowned. "But Craig thinks he'son the trail of something to help--"

  The storm priests had uprooted the staff marking the trading station andwere wrapping the white streamer about it. Their leader had already goneand now Tau came up to the group by the ramp.

  "Van says you have an idea," the Captain hailed him.

  "We haven't tried it yet. And we can't unless the priests give it a clearlane--"

  "That goes without saying--" Jellico agreed.

  The Captain had not addressed that remark to him personally, but Dane wassure it had been directed at him. Well, they needn't worry--never againwas he going to make that mistake, they could be very sure of that.

  He was part of the conference which followed in the mess cabin onlybecause he was a member of the crew. How far the reason for his disgracehad spread he had no way of telling, but he made no overtures, even toRip.

  Tau had the floor with Mura as an efficient lieutenant. He discussed theproperties of catnip and gave information on the limited supply the Queencarried. Then he launched into a new suggestion.

  "Felines of Terra, in fact a great many other of our native mammals, havea similar affinity for this."

  Mura produced a small flask and Tau opened it, passing it to CaptainJellico and so from hand to hand about the room. Each crewman sniffed atthe strong aroma. It was a heavier scent than that given off by thecrushed catnip--Dane was not sure he liked it. But a moment later Sinbadstreaked in from the corridor and committed the unpardonable sin ofleaping to the table top just before Mura who had taken the flask fromDane. He miaowed plaintively and clawed at the steward's cuff. Murastoppered the flask and put the cat down on the floor.

  "What is it?" Jellico wanted to know.

  "Anisette, a liquor made from the oil of anise--from seeds of the aniseplant. It is a stimulant, but we use it mainly as a condiment. If it isharmless for the Salariki it ought to be a bigger bargaining point thanany perfumes or spices, I-S can import. And remember, with theirunlimited capital, they can flood the market with products we can'ttouch, selling at a loss if need be to cut us out. Because their ship isnot going to lift from Sargol just because she has no legal right here."

  "There's this point," Van Rycke added to the lecture. "The Eysies aretrading or want to trade perfumes. But they stock only manufacturedproducts, exotic stuff, but synthetic." He took from his belt pouch twotiny boxes.

  Before he caught the rich scent of the paste inside them Dane had alreadyidentified each as luxury items from Casper--chemical products which soldwell and at high prices in the civilized ports of the Galaxy. TheCargo-master turned the boxes over, exposing the symbol on theirundersides--the mark of I-S.

  "These were offered to me in trade by a Salarik. I took them, just tohave proof that the Eysies are operating here. But--note--they wereoffered to me in trade, along with two top Koros for what? One spoonfulof dried catnip leaves. Does that suggest anything?"

  Mura answered first. "The Salariki prefer natural products to synthetic."

  "I think so."

  "D'you suppose that was Cam's secret?" speculated Astrogator SteenWilcox.

  "If it was," Jellico cut in, "he certainly kept it! If we had only knownthis earlier--"

  They were all thinking of that, of their storage space carefully packedwith useless trade goods. Where, if they had known, the same space couldhave carried herbs with five or twenty-five times as much buying power.

  "Maybe now that their sales' resistance is broken, we _can_ switch tosome of the other stuff," Tang Ya, torn away from his belovedcommunicators for the conference, said wistfully. "They like color--howabout breaking out some rolls of Harlinian moth silk?"

  Van Rycke sighed wearily. "Oh, we'll try. We'll bring out everything andanything. But we could have done so much better--" he brooded over thetricks of fate which had landed them on a planet wild for trade with noproper trade goods in either of their holds.

  There was a nervous little sound of a throat being apologeticallycleared. Jasper Weeks, the small wiper from the engine room detail, thethird generation Venusian colonist whom the more vocal members of theQueen's complement were apt to forget upon occasion, seeing all eyes uponhim, spoke though his voice was hardly above a hoarse whisper.

  "Cedar--lacquel bark--forsh weed--"

  "Cinnamon," Mura added to the list. "Imported in small quantities--"

  "Naturally! Only the problem now is--how much cedar, lacquel bark, forshweed, cinnamon do we have on board?" demanded Van Rycke.

  His sarcasm did not register with Weeks for the little man pushed by Daneand left the cabin to their surprise. In the quiet which followed theycould hear the clatter of his boots on ladder rungs as he descended tothe quarters of the engine room staff. Tang turned to his neighbor,Johan Stotz, the Queen's Engineer.

  "What's he going for?"

  Stotz shrugged. Weeks was a self-effacing man--so much so that even inthe cramped quarters of the spacer very little about him as an individualimpressed his mates--a fact which was slowly dawning on them all now.Then they heard the scramble of feet hurrying back and Weeks burst inwith energy which carried him across to the table behind which theCaptain and Van Rycke now sat.

  In the wiper's hands was a plasta-steel box--the treasure chest of aspaceman. Its tough exterior was guaranteed to protect the contentsagainst everything but outright disintegration. Weeks put it down on thetable and snapped up the lid.

  A new aroma, or aromas, was added to the scents now at war in the cabin.Weeks pulled out a handful of fluffy white stuff which frothed up abouthis fingers like soap lather. Then with more care he lifted up a traydivided into many small compartments, each with a separate sealing lid ofits own. The men of the Queen moved in, their curiosity aroused, untilthey were jostling one another.

  Being tall Dane had an advantage, though Van Rycke's bulk and the wideshoulders of the Captain were between him and the object they were sointent upon. In each division of the tray, easily seen through thetransparent lids, was a carved figure. The weird denizens of the Venusianpolar swamps were there, along with lifelike effigies of Terran animals,a Martian sand-mouse in all its monstrous ferocity, and the native animaland reptile life of half a hundred different worlds. Weeks put down asecond tray beside the first, again displaying a menagerie of strangelife forms. But when he clicked open one of the compartments and handedthe figurine it contained to the Captain, Dane understood the reason fornow bringing forward the carvings.

  The majority of them were fashioned from a dull blue-gray wood and Daneknew that if he picked one up he would discover that it weighed close tonothing in his hand. That was lacquel bark--the aromatic product of aVenusian vine. And each little animal or
reptile lay encased in a softdab of frothy white--frosh weed--the perfumed seed casing of the Martiancanal plants. One or two figures on the second tray were of a red-brownwood and these Van Rycke sniffed at appreciatively.

  "Cedar--Terran cedar," he murmured.

  Weeks nodded eagerly, his eyes alight. "I am waiting now forsandalwood--it is also good for carving--"

  Jellico stared at the array in puzzled wonder. "You have made these?"

  Being an amateur xenobiologist of no small standing himself, the shapesof the carvings more than the material from which they fashioned held hisattention.

  All those on board the Queen had their own hobbies. The monotony ofvoyaging through hyper-space had long ago impressed upon men the need foroccupying both hands and mind during the sterile days while they wereforced into close companionship with few duties to keep them alert.Jellico's cabin was papered with tri-dee pictures of the rare animals andalien creatures he had studied in their native haunts or of which he keptcareful and painstaking records. Tau had his magic, Mura not only hisplants but the delicate miniature landscapes he fashioned, to beimprisoned forever in the hearts of protecting plasta balls. But Weekshad never shown his work before and now he had an artist's supremepleasure of completely confounding his shipmates.

  The Cargo-master returned to the business on hand first. "You're willingto transfer these to 'cargo'?" he asked briskly. "How many do you have?"

  Weeks, now lifting a third and then a fourth tray from the box, repliedwithout looking up.

  "Two hundred. Yes, I'll transfer, sir."

  The Captain was turning about in his fingers the beautifully shapedfigure of an Astran duocorn. "Pity to trade these here," he mused aloud."Will Paft or Halfer appreciate more than just their scent?"

  Weeks smiled shyly. "I've filled this case, sir. I was going to offerthem to Mr. Van Rycke on a venture. I can always make another set. Andright now--well, maybe they'll be worth more to the Queen, seeing as howthey're made out of aromatic woods, then they'd be elsewhere. Leastwisethe Eysies aren't going to have anything like them to show!" he ended ina burst of honest pride.

  "Indeed they aren't!" Van Rycke gave honor where it was due.

  So they made plans and then separated to sleep out the rest of the night.Dane knew that his lapse was not forgotten nor forgiven, but now he washonestly too tired to care and slept as well as if his conscience wereclear.

  But morning brought only a trickle of lower class clansmen for tradingand none of them had much but news to offer. The storm priests, asneutral arbitrators, had divided up the Koros grounds. And the clansmen,under the personal supervision of their chieftains were busy hunting thestones. The Terrans gathered from scraps of information that gem seekingon such a large scale had never been attempted before.

  Before night there came other news, and much more chilling. Paft, one ofthe two major chieftains of this section of Sargol--while supervising theefforts of his liege men on a newly discovered and richly strewn lengthof shoal water--had been attacked and killed by gorp. The unusualactivity of the Salariki in the shallows had in turn drawn to the spotbattalions of the intelligent, malignant reptiles who had struck instrength, slaying and escaping before the Salariki could form an adequatedefense, having killed the land dwellers' sentries silently andeffectively before advancing on the laboring main bodies of gem hunters.

  A loss of a certain number of miners or fishers had been preseen as theprice one paid for Koros in quantity. But the death of a chieftain wasanother thing altogether, having repercussions which carried far beyondthe fact of his death. When the news reached the Salariki about the Queenthey melted away into the grass forest and for the first time the Terransfelt free of spying eyes.

  "What happens now?" Ali inquired. "Do they declare all deals off?"

  "That might just be the unfortunate answer," agreed Van Rycke.

  "Could be," Rip commented to Dane, "that they'd think we were in some wayresponsible--"

  But Dane's conscience, sensitive over the whole matter of Salariki trade,had already reached that conclusion.

  The Terran party, unsure of what were the best tactics, wisely decided todo nothing at all for the time being. But, when the Salariki seemed tohave completely vanished on the morning of the second day, the men wererestless. Had Paft's death resulted in some interclan quarrel over theheirship and the other clans withdrawn to let the various contendents forthat honor fight it out? Or--what was more probable and dangerous--hadthe aliens come to the point of view that the Queen was in the mainresponsible for the catastrophe and were engaged in preparing too warm awelcome for any Traders who dared to visit them?

  With the latter idea in mind they did not stray far from the ship. Andthe limit to their traveling was the edge of the forest from which theycould be covered and so they did not learn much.

  It was well into the morning before they were dramatically appraisedthat, far from being considered in any way an enemy, they were about tobe accepted in a tie as close as clan to clan during one of the temporarybut binding truces.

  The messenger came in state, a young Salarik warrior, his splendid cloakrent and hanging in tattered pieces from his shoulders as a sign of hisofficial grief. He carried in one hand a burned out torch, and in theother an unsheathed claw knife, its blade reflecting the sunlight with awicked glitter. Behind him trotted three couples of retainers, theircloaks also ragged fringes, their knives drawn.

  Standing up on the ramp to receive what could only be a formal deputationwere Captain, Astrogator, Cargo-master and Engineer, the senior officersof the spacer.

  In the rolling periods of the Trade Lingo the torch bearer identifiedhimself as Groft, son and heir of the late lamented Paft. Until hischieftain father was avenged in blood he could not assume the high seatof his clan nor the leadership of the family. And now, following custom,he was inviting the friends and sometimes allies of the dead Paft to agorp hunt. Such a gorp hunt, Dane gathered from amidst the flowers ofceremonial Salariki speech, as had never been planned before on the faceof Sargol. Salariki without number in the past had died beneath theripping talons of the water reptiles, but it was seldom that a chieftainhad so fallen and his clan were firm in their determination to take afull blood price from the killers.

  "--and so, sky lords," Groft brought his oration to a close, "we come toask that you send your young men to this hunting so that they may knowthe joy of plunging knives into the scaled death and see the horned onesdie bathed in their own vile blood!"

  Dane needed no hint from the Queen's officers that this invitation was asharp departure from custom. By joining with the natives in such a foraythe Terrans were being admitted to kinship of a sort, cementing relationsby a tie which the I-S, or any other interloper from off-world, wouldfind hard to break. It was a piece of such excellent good fortune as theywould not have dreamed of three days earlier.

  Van Rycke replied, his voice properly sonorous, sounding out the roundedperiods of the rolling tongue which they had all been taught during thevoyage, using Cam's recording. Yes, the Terrans would join with pleasurein so good and great a cause. They would lend the force of their arms tothe defeat of all gorp they had the good fortune to meet. Groft need onlyname the hour for them to join him--

  It was not needful, the young Salariki chieftain-to-be hastened to tellthe Cargo-master, that the senior sky lords concern themselves in thismatter. In fact it would be against custom, for it was meet that such ahunt be left to warriors of few years, that they might earn glory and beable to stand before the fires at the Naming as men. Therefore--the thumbclaw of Groft was extended to its greatest length as he used it to singleout the Terrans he had been eyeing--let this one, and that, and that, andthe fourth be ready to join with the Salariki party an hour after nooningon this very day and they would indeed teach the slimy, treacherouslurkers in the depths a well needed lesson.

  The Salarik's choice with one exception had unerringly fallen upon theyoungest members of the crew, Ali, Rip, and Dane in that order. But hisfourth
addition had been Jasper Weeks. Perhaps because of his nativepallor of skin and slightness of body the oiler had seemed, to the alien,to be younger than his years. At any rate Groft had made it very plainthat he chose these men and Dane knew that the Queen's officers wouldraise no objection which might upset the delicate balance of favorablerelations.

  Van Rycke did ask for one concession which was reluctantly granted. Hereceived permission for the spacer's men to carry their sleep rods.Though the Salariki, apparently for some reason of binding and hoarycustom, were totally opposed to hunting their age-old enemy with anythingother than their duelists' weapons of net and claw knife.

  "Go along with them," Captain Jellico gave his final orders to the four,"as long as it doesn't mean your own necks--understand? On the other handdead heroes have never helped to lift a ship. And these gorp are toughfrom all accounts. You'll just have to use your own judgment aboutspringing your rods on them--" He looked distinctly unhappy at thatthought.

  Ali was grinning and little Weeks tightened his weapon belt with a touchof swagger he had never shown before. Rip was his usual soft voiced self,dependable as a rock and a good base for the rest of them--taking commandwithout question as they marched off to join Groft's company.