Murdoc Jern #1 - The Zero Stone Read online

  The Cargo Master took from his belt a slender metal rod. Under his fingers it expanded longer and longer until he had a pole of double his own height. To the tip end he affixed a small pennon of bright yellow before he planted it fast in the soft mud of the riverbank. From comments, I gathered that, the village being deserted for some time by the signs, we could do no more than wait for the return of the natives—always providing that they were able to return. But since the visits of the Vestris were regular this could be expected to occur, again always excepting the fact that some disaster had not put an end to the established custom.

  Captain Isuran, philosophical as a Free Trader must learn to be, was not happy. While his ship did not run on a tight schedule, yet time did set some barriers on each planeting. We could not wait too long before taking off. However, a failure to trade here would upset all plans and make necessary rearrangements to cover the losses caused by such an abortive stop.

  Ostrend was in conference with the Captain for the hours that followed, while the rest of the crew speculated as to what might have happened, taking turns at sentry duty by the pennon. Since I was excluded from that, I allowed my own curiosity rein and explored, though not outside the limit wherein I could sight the skypointing nose of the ship.

  Save for the novelty of the hot springs, and those soon palled, their heat and smell being more than anyone could take for long, there were few sights worth seeing. The flying thing which had fled our entrance into the deserted village was the only living creature I had sighted. Even insect life here either was remarkably sparse, or for some reason shunned the vicinity of the ship. At last I squatted down by the side of one of the small streams which issued out of the section of hot pots and gushers, inspecting it for gravel. The gem hunter's preoccupation could grip me even here. But I saw nothing in the mess I scooped out and washed which held any promise.

  There were some bits of a curiously dull black, which had the look of no mineral or the like, but of a kind of fuzzy burr. Yet when I separated them from the sand and stones with a stick, I discovered them to be extremely hard. Even pounding with a stone did not crush them, or even mar their velvety-seeming surface. I did not believe them seeds, or vegetable refuse, and my interest in them grew, until I had about a dozen laid in a row in the sun, being cautious at first not to touch them with my fingers. Nature provides some nasty traps on many planets. They had no beauty, and I did not think any value. But the contrast between their suggestion of softness to the eye, and their real hardness of surface was odd enough to make me gather up three for future examination. There are gems which must be "peeled," worked down in layers from their unattractive outer coatings or shells. One of little worth may so be turned into something of value. And I had some vague ideas that perhaps these might hide a surprise under that fuzzy surface, though I had neither the tools nor the skill needed for such a task.

  As I knotted my choice into a square of seal-foam, Valcyr came walking, with that particular sure-footed daintiness of her species, along the bank of the small runlet. She progressed with nose to earth, almost as might a hound on a warm trail, and she was manifestly sniffing something which absorbed her attention.

  Then she reached my line of rejected ovoids and nosed each avidly. To my limited human nostrils they had no scent, but it was plain they did for the cat. Squatting down, she began to lick the largest, having sniffed them all. Fearing for her, I tried to knock it out of reach, but a lightning swift slash from unsheathed claws, ears flattened to skull, and a low growl warned me off. Sucking my bloodied fingers, I withdrew. It was plain that Valcyr guarded what she considered a treasure of price and was not minded to have any interference.

  Once I had withdrawn, she went back to her licking. Now and again she picked it up in her mouth to retreat a little way before she squatted down to return to her tongue-rasping exploration of the find.

  "Any luck?" Ostrend's young assistant threw a long shadow past me as he came up.

  "What are these? Have you seen them before?" I pointed to the fuzzy stones scattered about by Valcyr as she had made her examination and choice.

  Chiswit sat on his heels to study them. "Never saw them before. In fact"-he looked up and about "this whole stream is new here. Maybe one of the big mudholes blew its top. Wait! Do you suppose that was what happened and there was gas? That could have driven out the Toads. They like the stink and the heat, but maybe they could not stand up to gas."

  "Could be." But guesses about the disappearance of the natives, interesting as that might be, were not what I sought. I wanted information concerning the stones. If stones they were not, that was all I could term them. "You say you have never seen these. Was Valcyr with you when you planeted here last?"

  "Yes. She has been ship's cat for a long time."

  "And you never saw her do that before?" I pointed to where she now lay, the stone between her outstretched forepaws, her tongue working over and around it with absorbed concentration.

  Chiswit stared. "No—what is she doing? Why, she's licking one of these things! Why did you let her-?" He scrambled to his feet and took two strides. Valcyr might not have seen him coming, but she seemed to sense a danger to her find. With it in her jaws, she was gone in a bound, heading away from the ship, weaving in and out among the twisted rocks.

  We ran after her, but it was no use; she had disappeared—doubtless into some crevice where she could enjoy her find in peace. Chiswit turned on me with a demand as to why I had not earlier separated her from it. I showed him my bleeding hand and reported my failure. But the crewman was obviously upset and hunted through the rocky outcrops, calling and coaxing.

  I did not believe that Valcyr was going to appear until she was ready, the independence of cats being their marked characteristic. But I trailed him, peering into each shallow, cavelike hole, rounding rocks in search.

  We found her at last, lying on a small ledge under a deep overhang. Had it not been for the motion of her head as she swept the stone back and forth with her tongue, we might have missed her altogether, so close in color was her fur to the porous stone on which she lay. As Chiswit, speaking in a coaxing voice, went to his knees and held out his hand to her, she flattened her ears to her skull, hissed, and then gulped, and the stone vanished!

  She could not have swallowed it! The one she had chosen had been the largest of those I had fished out of the stream, and it had been an ovoid far too big to descend her gullet. Only the fact remained that that was what had happened and we both had seen it. She crawled out of her crevice and sat licking her lips like a cat who has dined well. When Chiswit reached for her, she suffered him to pick her up, kneading paws on his arm as he carried her, purring loudly, her eyes half shut, with no signs that the swallowing of her find had done her harm, or choked her. Chiswit started at a swift trot for the ship, while I knelt to look at the ledge, still hoping that the stone might have rolled somewhere, unable to believe it was now inside Valcyr.

  The gray rock of the ledge was bare. And had the stone rolled, it would lie now somewhere directly before me. But it did not. I even sifted the gravely sand through my fingers, to produce nothing. Then I ran a forefinger over the ledge. There was a faint dampness, perhaps from Valcyr's saliva. But, in addition, something else, a tingling, almost a shock as I touched one point. The second time I put tip of finger to the same spot there was nothing but the damp, and that was drying fast.

  "We saw her, I tell you! She swallowed a stone, a queer black stone-" Chiswit's voice rang down the corridor as I came along to the medico's quarters.

  "You saw the ray report—nothing in her throat. She cannot have swallowed it, man. It probably rolled away and-"

  "It did not, I looked," I said quietly as I came to the doorway.

  Valcyr was in the medico's arms, purring ecstatically, her claws working in and out. She had the appearance of a cat very well pleased with herself and the world.

  "Then it was not a stone, but something able to dissolve," he answered me assuredly.
r />   I took out my impovrished bag. "What do you call these? They are the same things she swallowed. I picked them out of a stream bed."

  He placed Valcyr gently on the bunk and motioned me to lay the bag on his small laboratory table. In the ship's light the fuzziness of the stones was even more marked. He picked up a small instrument and touched the surface of the largest, then tried to scrape away some of the velvet. But the point of the knife slipped across the stone.

  "I want a look at these." He was staring as intently as Valcyr had done.

  "Why not?" He might not have the tools of a gemologist, but at least he could give me some report on their substance. His interest was triggered and I thought he would work to get to the bottom of the mystery. Then I looked at Valcyr. The surface of the table on which the stones lay was very close to her. Would she be as attracted to another as she had to her first choice? Instead, she drowsily stretched out full length, her purring growing fainter, as if she were already half asleep.

  Since the size of the medico's quarters did not allow for spectators, Chiswit and I left him to his tests. But in the corridor the assistant Cargo Master asked:

  "How big was that thing when she first picked it up?"

  I measured off a space between two fingers. "They are all oval. She took the biggest one."

  "But she could not have swallowed it, not if it was that size!"

  "Then what happened to it?" I asked, trying to remember those few instants when we had last seen the stone. Had it been as large as I thought? Perhaps she had only nosed the one I believed she had picked, and had taken another. But I did not distrust my eyes that much. I was trained to know stones and their sizes. An apprentice to such a master as Vondar could judge a stone's size without taking it into his hand at all. True, this was something new. I had tried to crush one of those things between two rocks with no results.

  "She licked it smaller," Chiswit continued. "It is a seed or some hardened gum—and she just kept licking at it—so finally it melted."

  A reasonable explanation, but one my own tests would not allow me to accept. So—I had a paradox—Valcyr had swallowed what seemed to me a gemhard stone, and one far too large to pass her gullet. Perhaps the medico would come up with an answer. I would have to wait for that.

  On the second day the Captain broke out a small scout flitter, a one-man affair, but with range enough to explore the surrounding district. We could go on waiting here fruitlessly for months and he did not want to waste the time.

  Ostrend took off in it and was gone two days. He returned with the disappointing news that not only had he not found the villagers, but that he had seen no natives at all. And that there appeared to be an unusual scarcity of all life along the river and its tributaries. A few of the flying things such as we had disturbed on the first day, and which were eaters of carrion, were all he sighted. For the rest, the planet, as far as his cruising range, was as bare as if any higher forms of life had never existed at all.

  At that report the Free Traders held a conference, to which I was not a party, and it was decided that they would dump their now worthless cargo of crustaceans into the usual river pens, as a sign of good faith should the natives ever return. They would also leave their trade flag flying as a symbol of their visit. But they would have to vary their future route in order to make up for the loss of trade here.

  Which meant, I was curtly informed by Ostrend, that I was to continue my voyage on the Vestris for longer than planned. My first possible exit port had been that for which their medicinal cargo had been destined, and it would not now be visited. By space law I could not be summarily dumped on just any world, not when I had paid my passage, but must be carried to at least a second-stage port from which there was regular service. Now I would have to wait in boredom and impatience until we touched at such a place. And when that would be depended upon Ostrend's luck in picking up a cargo. He was continually with the Captain, going over taped trade reports, trying to find a way to make up for this failure.

  As far as could be observed, Valcyr was none the worse for her extraordinary meal—not at first. And the medico's efforts to solve the mystery of the stones continued, until at last he came to the mess cabin, fatigue's dark shadows under his eyes, wearing a bewildered expression. He drew a half cup of boiling water, added a caff pill, and watched it bubble and brown in an absent way that suggested he saw something very different from that ordinary shipboard drink.

  "A break-through, medico?" I asked.

  His eyes focused as if he saw me for the first time. "I do not know. But—that thing is alive!"

  "But-"

  He nodded. "Yes—but—The reading is very low—resembling hibernation level. Nothing I have can open its shell, or whatever holds that germ of life. I'll tell you something else-" He paused to drink the full contents of his cup in one intake of liquid. "Valcyr is going to have kittens—or something-"

  "The stone? But how-"

  He shrugged. "Do not ask me. I know it is against all nature as I know it. She ate that thing, you both say she did. And now she is going to have a kitten—or something-"

  "I'll tell you something else," he added as he drew a second portion of water. "I have rayed those stones into ash. And maybe I ought to do the same to the cat-"

  "Why?"

  This time he dropped two pills into the steaming cup. "Because if what I think is true, it is no kitten she is carrying. In fact it may be nothing we want aboard. I will keep an eye on her from now on. When her time comes—well, I can do what is best then." He took the second cup in a couple of gulps. When he left the mess cabin I saw that he turned to climb to the Captain's quarters.

  One of the dreads of a trading ship is an unnatural life form loose on board. There are all kinds of horror tales about what has happened to ships unfortunate enough to pick up stowaways which later turned them into drifting charnel houses. That was the very reason Valcyr and her kind had their secure position on board ship. There were other safeguards, irradiation of suspect cargo by immunization rays and the like. But still, in spite of all precautions, sometimes the alien slipped in. If it was harmless it could prove a nuisance or even a new and amusing pet. But the chances were great that such uninvited guests would be inimical.

  Traders are mainly immune to diseases of planets other than their native ones. Parallel but different roads of evolution performed this essential service. But they are not always immune to bites, stings, and attack from living creatures.

  Now it seemed that Valcyr, meant to be the sentry at the gate, might well have unwittingly betrayed our fortress. She was kept in an improvised cage in the small sick bay. But the medico reported she did not protest imprisonment as she might have done normally. Instead she slept much of the time, rousing only to eat and drink. She did not resent his handling of her, but seemed happy and content. We all visited her, and speculation concerning the nature of what she was about to introduce among us was rife.

  Ship time differs from planet time; we reckon it only artificially in days and nights because for so many centuries our species did live by sunrise and sunset and the flow of days. We were perhaps four weeks of such arbitrary time off the marsh planet when the medico broke into the off-watch rest cabin with the news that Valcyr had disappeared. In spite of his initial uneasiness, she had been so lethargic since we had upshipped that he had come to believe she would not fight confinement. Nor had she. But the fact remained that when he had taken her food and water, he had found the door swinging free and the occupant gone.

  A ship's interior is limited, and one would think that there would be few places where a cat, small as she was, could hide. But when we started a search from the control room down to the sealed cargo hatches and then, mentally accusing one another of having been careless, retraced the same way in pairs, even in threes, we found no trace of our quarry.

  We were in the corridor outside the mess cabin when Chiswit and Stan, the junior engineer, both turned on the medico and accused him of doing away with
Valcyr. Tempers were out of control by then and I had never realized how much the cat meant to these space voyagers until I heard the hot flow of anger in their tones. The medico denied their accusation just as vehemently, saying that he was well prepared to take measure for anything she might deliver, but that Valcyr would be safe. It was he who turned them all on me, snarling that I had allowed her to eat the stone in the first place, had even brought more of them on board.

  What might have happened I do not know. But the Captain swung down the ladder and snapped orders. I was sent to my cabin, to remove temptation from his men, I suppose. And at that moment I was willing enough to go. In fact, when I closed the door behind me I thumbed the lock. For I had discovered in the last few minutes that that wild night of flight through Koonga City had left its mark—and that when I heard that note in the voices of the crewmen, I had instinctively reached for a weapon I did not wear.

  I turned toward my bunk and froze. By the medico's reckoning Valcyr was still some time from the moment when she was to solve the mystery. Yet she lay now on my bunk. Where had she been during the search? I had looked in here twice, the others at least once, yet now she lay there as if she had rested for hours. And she was licking again—a thing which lay limply by her side.

  Though I was not familiar with kittens, I was sure that what Valcyr now cared for was not the normal young of her kind. It lay supine at its greatest length, head and tail outstretched. I could see the rise and fall of its side as it breathed with fast, fluttering breaths, so it was alive. But otherwise it looked dead. The body was covered with a black fuzz, close in appearance to the outward coating of the "stone." This was wiry and did not yield much to Valcyr's caressing tongue.