The Game of Stars and Comets Read online

  There came a crack of light and sound mingled, slashing down just outside the overhang. Kade started. Then his hand swept around to strike at the wrist above those fingers closing on his stunner. His gaze met that of the alien on the litter with a grim warning.

  "Do not try that now."

  Knowing that Lik would never accept him as an ally after this small defeat, Kade counterattacked swiftly, hoping to surprise some morsel of information out of the other.

  "I am not meat for your killing, Overman!"

  Lik's hatred was plain, and now nakedly open in the glare of his yellow eyes. The lips, feline flat against his teeth, were in a snarl of rage. Kade pushed his point.

  "Why? Because I am Terran, or because I am I?" He could conceive of no reason for a personal feud between them, though he had disliked the other from their first meeting. Perhaps that instinctive revulsion had been mutual, and carried to an extreme by the alien's temperament.

  Lik did not answer. His hands now lay clenched upon his middle where once they had played over the keys of the control and he closed his eyes, his whole body expressing his stubborn refusal to reply.

  Iskug's fire blazed, driving out a portion of the damp storm chill with welcome heat. As the hunters gathered about it, their leader placed the control box between his knees, turning it this way and that in the light of the flames. Once he raised it in his two hands as if to cast it into the heart of the fire and from behind Kade heard Lik's small, evil chuckle.

  Spurred by that sound the Terran shouted, "No!" Ikkinni heads turned. He added swiftly, "The Overman wishes that!"

  Iskug stood up, tucked the control box back in his net sling, came to stand over Lik. Kade saw the alien did not flinch even when a spear pricked his flesh at heart level.

  "Strike, dirt eater," Lik's lips shaped a grimace which might have been meant for a smile. "Strike and then guard that box, for it will bind every one of you!"

  One of the other hunters came hurrying across, loomed over the wounded alien.

  "Make that not so!" He ordered.

  Again Lik laughed. "It could not if it would," he retorted, spirit undiminished. "The secret is not its—"

  "It may be right," Kade pointed out. "This is a Styor thing. And Lik is not Styor."

  The Overman's reaction to that was unexpected. Kade might have struck purposefully at a half-healed wound, bringing again agonizing pain. Lik jerked up on the litter, his fist striking the Terran on the shoulder, knocking Kade off balance so that he sprawled back. Again those fingers snatched at his holstered weapon, and this time the off-worlder was too late to prevent loss. But he was leaping again for Lik as the alien snapped the beam button. There was no visible answer to that half aimed shot. And a moment later Kade's hold was on the other's wrist, twisting.

  As suddenly as he had attacked the other, Lik surrendered, panting under the Terran's weight. And Kade had freedom to see what the stunner had done.

  Iskug rolled on the gravel, his face again dusky, his hands tearing at the collar. Beyond him the rest of his fellows were down in the same torture. Then the head tracker gasped, half leaped, to fall back, but he was still breathing. The hands at his throat tugged again at the collar. And under that grip, feeble as it must have been, the band of silvery stuff broke.

  He dropped the broken circlet, rubbed his throat with his fingers. Two of the other hunters lay still, one with his knees drawn up to his chest in a silent expression of his death pain. But the others moved sluggishly, almost as if they could not believe they were still living. Each, witnessing Iskug's luck, put hands to their own collars, snapped the bands easily.

  Iskug cradled the control box between his hands once again. Cautiously he raised the cube to the level of his ear, shook it with increasing vigor. Then, in his fingers, the thing came apart, showered a rain of crumbled container and small, unidentifiable interior parts. Kade began to deduct what had happened.

  Lik had struck that control with the beam from the Terran stunner. And that force thrust had reacted violently upon the Styor mechanism, not only deadening the collars—after one intense, final attack on their wearers—but ending by burning out completely the whole installation. In that same instant that the off-worlder realized the possibilities of the weapon now in his hand, Lik must have followed the same line of reasoning. For the alien lost his head.

  He heaved under Kade's hold, fingers gouging and tearing at the Terran's eyes, his teeth snapping as might an animal's on the flesh of the other's forearm. And such was the wild passion of that attack that, for a second, Kade was forced on the defensive. Lik was pounds heavier than his opponent, and much of that poundage was well-developed muscle. Unlike Buk at the post, this Overman had not followed the slothful existence of the usual slave driver. Rather, his hunting expeditions had kept him in good physical condition.

  Now, because he had lost all desire for self-preservation, he was intent only on destroying Kade, Kade's knowledge, Kade's suddenly vital weapon. Lik was as dangerous as the kwitu bull. And the Terran sensed that he was now fighting for his life.

  He broke Lik's hold on his throat when by lucky chance he drove his knee down upon the other's wound. With a yelp, the Overman twisted, relaxing steel-tight fingers for a moment. Kade brought into play the scientifically taught infighting, part of the Service's training. He made connections with the other's square jaw at just the right angle, rolling away as a spear flashed over his hunched shoulder bit deep enough to send the answering spout of blood up on the breast of his own tunic.

  "Why?"

  But there was no reason really to ask why Iskug had killed. The Ikkinni was exacting payment for all the months, perhaps years, that he had lived under Lik's control. Now that the box was dead and he no longer needed Lik's knowledge of it, the Overman ceased to exist. But he took with him into the dark the answer to Kade's own questions. Why had the Terran been set up for the kill, and by whose orders?

  In return they had the reply to the Styor's dominance on Klor. A drastic remedy though. Two out of seven died to achieve freedom—too high a price. Or did the Ikkinni think that way? Kade found an extra undershirt in his bedroll, collected every bit of the disintegrated control box from the gravel, adding to that the remains of one of the collars, which also crumbled at his touch. The Ikkinni watched him, still massaging their throats. Dokital, his collar conspicuous in that company now, joined the Terran in his task, his long fingers shifting out bits of wire, small wheels, a fragment of what might have been a charge disc.

  "This is broken," he commented.

  "There are those who perhaps can understand even a broken thing."

  "Those in the stars?"

  Kade nodded, knotted his improvised bag carefully. "If such is understood, next time there may be no more who die."

  "A next time there?" Dokital's eyes were alive, brilliant flames of awakened fire.

  "A next time, when we know more, yes." Kade promised.

  "The starwalker returns to its kind?" Iskug broke in.

  "It returns to the fire of its kind," Kade spoke firmly. He hoped the newly liberated men would not try to hold him prisoner.

  "It returns, then hunters come—they who hunt men." Iskug looked stubborn.

  "Not so," Kade objected. "It will have a story."

  "What story?"

  "That there was trouble with the kwitu and much killing by horn and hoof. This is the time of the great trek to the north and there is the storm. The kwitu were maddened by the storm, they came upon the camp where the sonic did not work. All died save it, and it." He pointed to Dokital and himself. "It and it were sleeping apart. And those who have planned for some deaths will be told of others come by ill chance. Who shall say this is not true?"

  Iskug considered that. For the first time he smiled, thinly.

  "The tale is good for it is mixed truth and careful thought. Who not in the mountains can prove the forked words are not straight? The collar master meant death for the starwalker, so arranged that we leave camp, that th
e sonic was silent. Then came the death, but not as it was planned. Yes, those," he spat, made a sign of vileness with two fingers, "could believe. And who seeks the dead to wear slave rings? The trail is open." He reversed his spear, driving it head down in the gravel.

  "It says this also," he continued. "Discover what that weapon from the stars can do, and then give life to more slave ones. It lays this on you as a fire oath."

  "So shall it be, as Iskug says," Kade agreed. He had gained his point, now he was eager to return to the post where he could start to work the affair of stunner against so much from him?

  Chapter 5

  "But why was the sonic off?" Santoz leaned across the mess table to ask almost querulously. "Those Overmen know their drill out in the backs. Why, the camp could have been overrun by lurkers."

  "Yes, why did the sonic fail?" But when Abu echoed that he was not asking a question of the defensive Kade, rather of the whole Terran Team. "Did you examine it afterwards, ascertain whether it failed through any mechanical defect?"

  "You can't tell anything about a machine crushed by an angry kwitu bull," Kade pointed out, treading this conversational trail as warily as he might have lurked on the fringe of a hostile camp. He had had three days during his march back to the post with Dokital to prune and polish his story, working up bits of collaborative detail with the Ikkinni. And he hoped they both had the proper answers for any question which would come from either Styor or Terran.

  "Very true," Abu agreed. "And you were asleep when the invasion of the camp occurred."

  "Yes." So far he had woven truth into later fiction.

  Che'in voiced a faint giggle. "Almost one could imagine," he drawled, "that your young Teammate here was in the greatest danger of all at that moment. How fortuitous, Whitehawk, that you should have awakened in good time. The Spirits of Outer Space would seem to favor you. Also, of course, Whitehawk could not determine, even if he had had it for inspection, whether the sonic was functioning properly. Those are a product of the Styor and so another of the small mysteries which so tantalizingly spice a Trader's life." He lapsed into silence, still smiling, a smile which urged them all to enjoy a subtle joke unnecessary to put into crass speech.

  "The sonic's failure had been reported to Cor," Abu remarked in the tone of one making an official statement.

  "Yes, it might almost seem that someone paid a high price for a bad bargain." Kade tried to needle some response from these three who certainly possessed more knowledge of Klorian affairs.

  Santoz looked baffled, Che'in amused. The reply was left to their commanding officer.

  "We will not go into that." The Commander's retort had the snap of an order. "The High-Lord-Pac will conduct the investigation. It is out of our hands, since the dead and missing are not post personnel."

  Proper investigation for which side, Kade wanted to ask and knew that would be fruitless. He got up.

  "That is exactly what happened." He caught a measuring glance from Abu, and was no longer so sure of himself.

  "The report has gone to Cor. Undoubtedly we shall hear more."

  Again Che'in giggled. "When one digs too deeply into the bottom of a still pond, one stirs up a quantity of mud," he observed. "And the High-Lord-Pac is not one to dirty his gloves of justice. Stalemate, commander?"

  "We may be glad for that. You," Abu regarded Kade straightly, this time with a critical and unsympathetic eye. "Walk softly, my friend. You will take over the com transmitter. I have a wish for you to be at hand if your testimony should suddenly be needed."

  To tend the transmitter, in a station where off-world messages were few, might have meant a period of unrelieved boredom. But Kade brought with him the tape which had been Steel's record, and sitting where he could see the alarm light above the relay board, plugged in an ear-reader to hear the words of a man who had been killed somewhere on Klor—just as he might have been killed four days ago.

  The expressionless words which spun long sentences of trade detail, descriptions of the country and the natives into his ears were monotonous, and he had to guess what should have been in the gaps. This tape had not been edited for a stranger's use, a man's record was for his own advantage, a reminder of details pertinent to his particular post job. Kade had not expected a concise listing, just a leading hint or two.

  He judged by the abundance of notes on flora and fauna that Steel had had a keen interest in the biology of the planet, narrowing eventually to observations concerning the plains vegetation, the kwitu herds, and the mountain valleys.

  When those two unusual words were mentioned, Kade did not at first realize their significance. Then he straightened, his swift movement jerking loose the reader cord. Had he really heard that? The Terran thumped the small plug back into his ear, waited tensely for a repeat of that unbelievable phrase. Unbelievable because it had been uttered in another tongue, one perhaps twenty men in the Service, and those men scattered on like number of planets, could have translated.

  "Peji equals sunkakan!"

  So he had been right! Those two words in Lakota Sioux had cropped up in the middle of a description of a mountain valley Steel had surveyed, planted there perhaps to conceal their importance from any future user of the tape, save one of his own tribe. But had Steel then been expecting trouble, or personal danger? And how could the other have foreseen he would be replaced on Klor by a fellow tribesman. No, Steel must have used that phrase because the words themselves had a strong meaning for him, a meaning connected with his own racial past.

  Peji: grass, the grass of the North American plains where Sioux warriors had ruled. Sunkakan: horses, the horses which the white man had brought, but which turned drifting primitive hunters into the finest irregular cavalry his home world had ever seen, aided them to hold back an encroaching mechanical civilization for a surprising number of years. Hold back conquerors! Kade pulled the plug from his ear, stared at the com board without seeing one of its buttons or levers.

  That was history, and history was repetitious. The Amerindian, mounted, had held back the American Frontiersman, for a time. But earlier he had done something else. He had driven back, almost annihilated an older culture, based on domination and slavery. The Comanche, the Apache, the Navajo, mounted, had pushed their would-be Spanish rulers out of the Southwest, spoiled, removed from the earth the haciendas spreading northward, the mission-held lands, liberating the slave-peons either by death or by adoption into their own savage ranks. The Spanish, secure with their superior weapons, their horses, had crept up into the deserts and plains. The Indians had seen, had taken mounts from the Spanish corrals, had come raiding so that in less than a century, perhaps a half-century, the Spanish wave northward had broken, washed back, been put on the defensive even in the strongholds of Mexico.

  The horse put by chance and blindness into the hands of born horsemen!

  Had that been Steel's dream too? Feverishly Kade went back to his listening, ran through the whole tape. He was sure now he could pick out hints, that something of that idea had been in the dead man's mind. But only that one phrase was clear. Introduce horses into a horseless world, a world of plains where the grass would sustain the breed. Put the horse into the hands of natives now immured in the mountains. Make of them lightning raiders who could hit and run, darting back into mountain hideouts where the airborne reprisals of the Styor could not follow. A band of attackers who could split into individual riders only to regroup when the danger of pursuit was past, and how could an air patrol cover the scattering of half a troop of men all riding in different directions? Just as the outlying haciendas of the Spanish had fallen one after another to whittling raids, enemies striking without warning out of the plains, so could the lords of Klor, in their widely separated holdings, be victimized by raiders who had at their command a method of swift transportation which was not a machine to be serviced or to lack fuel, which would reproduce itself without any need for technologists or factories.

  Kade's enthusiasm grew as his imagination paint
ed a host of details. He believed he saw a way in which the High-Lord-Pac could be used to initiate the Styor downfall. A selection of tri-dees of horses, shown to an alien already enough interested in off-world animals to pay the fantastic fee for the importation of a bear, ought to do the trick.

  Kade's enthusiasm grew as his imagination painted a might-be-easy. But horses for the Ikkinni—What proof had he that the native hunters of Klor would take as readily to the use of alien animals as his ancestors had done? Suppose the Ikkinni were neither natural born riders, nor could be made into passable horsemen? And they had no history of domesticated animals, even the dogs and cats which had accompanied his own Terran kind for so long were not to be found on Klor.