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Title: Citadel of Lost Ships
Author: Leigh Brackett
Release Date: June 3, 2020 [EBook #62316]
Language: English
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Citadel of Lost Ships
By LEIGH BRACKETT
It was a Gypsy world, built of space flotsam,
peopled with the few free races of the Solar
System. Roy Campbell, outcast prey of the
Coalition, entered its depths to seek haven
for the Kraylens of Venus--only to find that it
had become a slave trap from which there was no escape.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories March 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Roy Campbell woke painfully. His body made a blind, instinctive lunge
for the control panel, and it was only when his hands struck the
smooth, hard mud of the wall that he realized he wasn't in his ship
any longer, and that the Spaceguard wasn't chasing him, their guns
hammering death.
He leaned against the wall, the perspiration thick on his heavy
chest, his eyes wide and remembering. He could feel again, as though
the running fight were still happening, the bucking of his sleek
Fitz-Sothern beneath the calm control of his hands. He could remember
the pencil rays lashing through the night, searching for him, seeking
his life. He could recall the tiny prayer that lingered in his memory,
as he fought so skillfully, so dangerously, to evade the relentless
pursuer.
Then there was a hazy period, when a blasting cannon had twisted his
ship like a wind-tossed leaf, and his head had smashed cruelly against
the control panel. And then the slinking minutes when he had raced for
safety--and then the sodden hours when sleep was the only thing in the
Universe that he craved.
He sank back on the hide-frame cot with something between a laugh
and a curse. He was sweating, and his wiry body twitched. He found a
cigarette, lit it on the second try and sat still, listening to his
heartbeats slow down.
He began to wonder, then, what had wakened him.
It was night, the deep indigo night of Venus. Beyond the open hut door,
Campbell could see the _liha_-trees swaying a little in the hot, slow
breeze. It seemed as though the whole night swayed, like a dark blue
veil.
For a long time he didn't hear anything but the far-off screaming of
some swamp-beast on the kill. Then, sharp and cruel against the blue
silence, a drum began to beat.
It made Campbell's heart jerk. The sound wasn't loud, but it had a
tight, hard quality of savagery, something as primal as the swamp and
as alien, no matter how long a man lived with it.
The drumming stopped. The second, perhaps the third, ritual prelude.
The first must have wakened him. Campbell stared with narrow dark eyes
at the doorway.
He'd been with the Kraylens only two days this time, and he'd slept
most of that. Now he realized, that in spite of his exhaustion, he had
sensed something wrong in the village.
Something was wrong, very wrong, when the drum beat that way in the
sticky night.
He pulled on his short, black spaceman's boots and went out of the hut.
No one moved in the village. Thatch rustled softly in the slow wind,
and that was the only sign of life.
Campbell turned into a path under the whispering _liha_-trees. He
wore nothing but the tight black pants of his space garb, and the hot
wind lay on his skin like soft hands. He filled his lungs with it. It
smelled of warm still water and green, growing things, and....
Freedom. Above all, _freedom_. This was one place where a man could
still stand on his legs and feel human.
The drumming started again, like a man's angry heart beating out of the
indigo night. This time it didn't stop. Campbell shivered. The trees
parted presently, showing a round dark hummock.
It was lit by the hot flare of burning _liha_ pods. Sweet oily smoke
curled up into the branches. There was a sullen glint of water through
the trees, but there were closer glints, brighter, fiercer, more deadly.
The glinting eyes of men, silent men, standing in a circle around the
hummock.
There was a little man crouched on the mound in the center. His skin
had the blue-whiteness of skim milk. He wore a kilt of iridescent
scales. His face was subtly reptilian, broad across the cheek-bones and
pointed below.
A crest of brilliant feathers--they weren't really feathers, but that
was as close as Campbell could get--started just above his brow ridges
and ran clean down his spine to the waist. They were standing erect
now, glowing in the firelight.
He nursed a drum between his knees. It stopped being just a drum when
he touched it. It was his own heart, singing and throbbing with the
hate in it.
Campbell stopped short of the circle. His nerves, still tight from his
near-fatal brush with the Spaceguard, stung with little flaring pains.
He'd never seen anything like this before.
The little man rocked slightly, looking up into the smoke. His eyes
were half closed. The drum was part of him and part of the indigo
night. It was part of Campbell, beating in his blood.
It was the heart of the swamp, sobbing with hate and a towering anger
that was as naked and simple as Adam on the morning of Creation.
* * * * *
Campbell must have made some involuntary motion, because a man standing
at the edge of the hummock turned his head and saw him. He was tall and
slender, and his crest was pure white, a sign of age.
He turned and came to Campbell, looking at him with opalescent eyes.
The firelight laid the Earthman's dark face in sharp relief, the lean
hard angles, the high-bridged nose that had been broken and not set
straight, the bitter mouth.
Campbell said, in pure liquid Venusian, "What is it, Father?"
The Kraylen's eyes dropped to the Earthman's naked breast. There was
black hair on it, and underneath the hair ran twisting, intricate lines
of silver and deep blue, tattooed with exquisite skill.
The old man's white crest nodded. Campbell turned and went back down
the path. The wind and the _liha_-trees, the hot blue night beat with
the anger and the hate of the little man with the drum.
Neither spoke until they were back in the hut. Campbell lit a smoky
lamp. The old Kraylen drew a long, slow breath.
"My almost-son," he said, "this is the last time I can give you refuge.
When you are able, you must go and return no more."
Campbell stared at him. "But, Father! Why?"
The old man spread long blue-white hands. His voice was heavy.
"Because we, the Kraylens, shall have ceased to be."
Campbell didn't say anything for a minute. He sat down on the
hide-frame cot and ran his fingers through his black hair.
"Tell me, Father," he said quietly, grimly.
The Kraylen's white crest rippled in the lamplight. "It is not your
fight."
Campbell got up. "Look. You've saved my neck more times than I can
count. You've accepted me as one of your own. I've been happier here
than any--well, skip that. But don't say it isn't my fight."
The pale, triangular old face smiled. But the white crest shook.
"No. There is really no fight. Only death. We're a dying tribe, a mere
scrap of old Venus. What matter if we die now--or later?"
Campbell lit a cigarette with quick, sharp motions. His voice was hard.
"Tell me, Father. All, and quick."
Opalescent eyes met his. "It is better not."
"I said, 'tell me'!"
"Very well." The old man sighed. "You would hear, after all. You
remember the frontier town of Lhi?"
"Remember it!" Campbell's white teeth flashed. "Every dirty stone in
it, from the pumping conduits on up. Best place on three planets to
fence the hot stuff."
He broke off, suddenly embarrassed. The Kraylen said gently,
"That is your affair, my son. You've been away a long time. Lhi has
changed. The Terra-Venusian Coalition Government has taken it for the
administration center of Tehara Province."
Campbell's eyes, at mention of the Coalition Government, acquired a
hot, hard brightness. He said, "Go on."
The old man's face was cut from marble, his voice stiff and distant.
"There have been men in the swamps. Now word has been sent us. It seems
there is coal here, and oil, and certain minerals that men prize. They
will drain the swamps for many miles, and work them."
Campbell let smoke out of his lungs, very slowly. "Yeah? And what
becomes of you?"
The Kraylen turned away and stood framed in the indigo square of the
doorway. The distant drum sobbed and shouted. It was hot, and yet the
sweat turned cold on Campbell's body.
The old man's voice was distant and throbbing and full of anger, like
the drum. Campbell had to strain to hear it.
"They will take us and place us in camps in the great cities. Small
groups of us, so that we are divided and split. Many people will pay to
see us, the strange remnants of old Venus. They will pay for our skills
in the curing of _leshen_-skins and the writing of quaint music, and
tattooing. We will grow rich."
Campbell dropped the cigarette and ground it on the dirt floor. Knotted
veins stood out on his forehead, and his face was cruel. The old man
whispered:
"_We will die first._"
* * * * *
It was a long time since anyone had spoken. The drumming had stopped,
but the echo of it throbbed in Campbell's pulses. He looked at his
spread, sinewy hands on his knees and swallowed because the veins of
his neck were swollen and hurting.
Presently he said, "Couldn't you go further back into the swamps?"
The old Kraylen spoke without moving. He still stood in the doorway,
watching the trees sway in the slow wind.
"The Nahali live there. Besides, there is no clean water and no earth
for crops. We are not lizard eaters."
"I've seen it happen," said Campbell somberly. "On Earth, and Mars,
and Mercury, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Little people driven
from their homes, robbed of their way of life, exploited and for the
gaping idiots in the trade centers. Little people who didn't care about
progress, and making money. Little people who only wanted to live, and
breathe, and be let alone."
He got up in a swift savage rush and hurled a gourd of water crashing
into a corner and sat down again. He was shivering. The old Kraylen
turned.
"Little people like you, my son?"
Campbell shrugged. "Maybe. We'd worked our farm for three hundred
years. My father didn't want to sell. They condemned it anyhow. It's
under water now, and the dam runs a hell of a big bunch of factories."
"I'm sorry."
Campbell looked up, and his face softened. "I've never understood," he
said. "You people are the most law-abiding citizens I ever met. You
don't like strangers. And yet I blunder in here, hot on the lam and
ugly as a swamp-dragon, and you...."
He stopped. It was probably the excitement that was making his throat
knot up like that. The smoke from the lamp stung his eyes. He blinked
and bent to trim it.
"You were wounded, my son, and in trouble. Your quarrel with the police
was none of ours. We would have helped anyone. And then, while you had
fever and your guard was down, you showed that more than your body
needed help. We gave you what we could."
"Yeah," said Campbell huskily. He didn't say it, but he knew well
enough that what the Kraylens had given him had kept him from blowing
his top completely.
Now the Kraylens were going the way of the others, straws swept before
the great broom of Progress. Nothing could stop it. Earth's empire
surged out across the planets, building, bartering, crashing across
time and custom and race to make money and the shining steel cage of
efficiency.
A cage wherein a sheep could live happily enough, well-fed and opulent.
But Campbell wasn't a sheep. He'd tried it, and he couldn't bleat in
tune. So he was a wolf, now, alone and worrying the flock.
Soon there wasn't going to be a place in the Solar System where a man
could stand on his own feet and breathe.
He felt stifled. He got up and stood in the doorway, watching the trees
stir in the hot indigo gloom. The trees would go. Wells and mines, slag
and soot and clattering machinery, and men in sweat-stained shirts
laboring night and day to get, to grow, to produce.
Campbell's mouth twisted, bitter and sardonic. He said softly:
"God help the unconstructive!"
The old Kraylen murmured, "What happened to those others, my son?"
Campbell's lean shoulders twitched. "Some of them died. Some of them
submitted. The rest...."
He turned, so suddenly that the old man flinched. Campbell's dark eyes
had a hot light in them, and his face was sharply alive.
"The rest," he said evenly, "went to Romany."
* * * * *
He talked, then. Urgently, pacing the hut in nervous catlike strides,
trying to remember things he had heard and not been very much
interested in at the time. When he was through, the Kraylen said:
"It would be better. Infinitely better. But--" He spread his long pale
hands, and his white crest drooped. "But there is no time. Government
men will come within three days to take us--that was the time set. And
since we will not go...."
Campbell thought of the things that had happened to other rebellious
tribes. He felt sick. But he made his voice steady.
"We'll hope it's time, Father. Romany is in an orbit around Venus
now--I nearly crashed it coming in. I'm going to try, anyhow. If I
don't--well, stall as long as you can."
Remembering the drum and the way the men had looked, he didn't think
that would be long. He pulled on a loose shirt of green spider-silk,
slung the belt of his heavy needle-gun over one shoulder, and picked up
his black tunic.
He put his hand on the Kraylen's shoulder and smiled. "We'll take care
of it, Father."
The old man's opalescent eyes were shadowed. "I wish I could stop you.
It's hopeless for us, and you are--_hot_ is that the word?"
Campbell grinned. "Hot," he said, "is the word. Blistering! The
Coalition gets awfully mad when someone pulls their own hi-jacking
stunt on them. But I'm used to it."
It was beginning to get light outside. The old man said quietly, "The
gods go with you, my son."
Campbell went out, thinking he'd need them.
It was full day when he reached his hidden ship--a sleek, souped-up
Fitts-Sothern that had the legs of almost anything in space. He paused
briefly by the airlock, looking at the sultry green of _liha_-trees
under a pearl-grey sky, the white mist lapping around his narrow waist.
He spent a long time over his charts, feeding numbers to the
calculators. When he got a set-up that suited him, he took the
Fitts-Sothern up on purring 'copters, angling out over the deep swamps.
He felt better, with the ship under his hands.
The Planetary Patrol blanket was thin over the deep swamps, but it was
vigilant. Campbell's nerves were tight. They got tighter as he came
closer to the place where he was going to have to begin his loop over
to the night side.
He was just reaching for the rocket switch when the little red light
started to flash on the indicator panel.
Somebody had a detector beam on him. And he was morally certain that
the somebody was flying a Patrol boat.
II
There was one thing about the Venusian atmosphere. You couldn't see
through it, even with infra-beams, at very long range. The intensity
needle showed the Patrol ship still far off, probably not suspicious
yet, although stray craft were rare over the swamps.
In a minute the copper would be calling for information, with his
mass-detectors giving the Fitts-Sothern a massage. Campbell didn't
think he'd wait. He slammed in the drive rockets, holding them down
till the tubes warmed. Even held down, they had plenty.
The Fitts-Sothern climbed in a whipping spiral. The red light wavered,
died, glowed again. The copper was pretty good with his beam. Campbell
fed in more juice.
The red light died again. But the Patrol boat had all its beams out
now, spread like a fish net. The Fitts-Sothern struck another, lost it,
struck again, and this time she didn't break out.
Campbell felt the sudden racking jar all through him. "Tractor beams,"
he said. "You think so, buddy?"
The drive jets were really warming now. He shot it to them. The
Fitts-Sothern hung for a fractional instant, her triple-braced hull
shuddering so that Campbell's teeth rang together.
Then she broke, blasting up right through the netted beams. Campbell
jockeyed his port and starboard steering jets. The ship leaped and
skittered wildly. The copper didn't have time to focus full power on
her anywhere, and low power to the Fitts-Sothern was a nuisance and
nothing more.
Campbell went up over the Patrol ship, veered off in the opposite
direction from the one he intended to follow, hung in a tight spiral
until he was sure he was clean, and then dived again.
The Patrol boat wasn't expecting him to come back. The pilot was
concentrating on where Campbell had gone, not where he had been.
Campbell grinned, opened full throttle, and went skittering over the
curve of the planet to meet the night shadow rushing toward him.
He didn't meet any more ships. He was way off the trade lanes, and
moving so fast that only blind luck could tag him. He hoped the Patrol
was hunting for him in force, back where they'd lost him. He hoped
they'd hunt a long time.
Presently he climbed, on slowed and muffled jets, out of the
atmosphere. His black ship melted indistinguishably into the black
shadow of the planet. He slowed still more, just balancing the
Venus-drag, and crawled out toward a spot marked on his astrogation
chart.
An Outer Patrol boat went by, too far off to bother about. Campbell lit
a cigarette with nervous hands. It was only a quarter smoked when the
object he'd been waiting for loomed up in space.
His infra-beam showed it clearly. A round, plate-shaped mass about a
mile in diameter, built of three tiers of spaceships. Hulks, ancient,
rusty, pitted things that had died and not been decently buried, welded
together in a solid mass by lengths of pipe let into their carcasses.
Before, when he had seen it, Campbell had been in too much of a hurry
to do more than curse it for getting in his way. Now he thought it was
the most desolate, Godforsaken mass of junk that had ever made him
wonder why people bothered to live at all.
He touched the throttle, tempted to go back to the swamps. Then he
thought of what was going to happen back there, and took his hand away.
"Hell!" he said. "I might as well look inside."
He didn't know anything about the internal set-up of Romany--what made
it tick, and how. He knew Romany didn't love the Coalition, but whether
they would run to harboring criminals was another thing.
It wouldn't be strange if they had been given pictures of Roy Campbell
and told to watch for him. Thinking of the size of the reward for him,
Campbell wished he were not quite so famous.
Romany reminded him of an old-fashioned circular mouse-trap. Once
inside, it wouldn't be easy to get out.
"Of all the platinum-plated saps!" he snarled suddenly. "Why am I
sticking my neck out for a bunch of semi-human swamp-crawlers, anyhow?"
He didn't answer that. The leading edge of Romany knifed toward him.
There were lights in some of the hulks, mostly in the top layer.
Campbell reached for the radio.
He had to contact the big shots. No one else could give him what he
needed. To do that, he had to walk right up to the front door and
announce himself. After that....
The manual listed the wave-length he wanted. He juggled the dials and
verniers, wishing his hands wouldn't sweat.
"Spaceship _Black Star_ calling Romany. Calling Romany...."
His screen flashed, flickered, and cleared. "Romany acknowledging. Who
are you and what do you want?"
* * * * *
Campbell's screen showed him a youngish man--a Taxil, he thought, from
some Mercurian backwater. He was ebony-black and handsome, and he
looked as though the sight of Campbell affected him like stale beer.
Campbell said, "Cordial guy, aren't you? I'm Thomas Black, trader out
of Terra, and I want to come aboard."
"That requires permission."
"Yeah? Okay. Connect me with the boss."
The Taxil now looked as though he smelled something that had been dead
a long time. "Possibly you mean Eran Mak, the Chief Councillor?"
"Possibly," admitted Campbell, "I do." If the rest of the gypsies were
anything like this one, they sure had a hate on for outsiders.
Well, he didn't blame them. The screen blurred. It stayed that way
while Campbell smoked three cigarettes and exhausted his excellent
vocabulary. Then it cleared abruptly.
Eran Mak sounded Martian, but the man pictured on the screen was no
Martian. He was an Earthman, with a face like a wedge of granite and a
frame that was all gaunt bones and thrusting angles.
His hair was thin, pale-red and fuzzy. His mouth was thin. Even his
eyes were thin, close slits of pale blue with no lashes. Campbell
disliked him instantly.
"I'm Tredrick," said the Earthman. His voice was thin, with a sound in
it like someone walking on cold gravel. "Terran Overchief. Why do you
wish to land, Mister Black?"
"I bring a message from the Kraylen people of Venus. They need help."
Tredrick's eyes became, if possible, thinner and more pale.
"_Help?_"
"Yes. Help." Campbell was struck by a sudden suspicion, something he
caught flickering across Tredrick's granite features when he said
"Kraylen." He went on, slowly, "The Coalition is moving in on them. I
understand you people of Romany help in cases like that."
There was a small, tight silence.
"I'm sorry," said Tredrick. "There is nothing we can do."
Campbell's dark face tightened. "Why not? You helped the Shenyat people
on Ganymede and the Drylanders on Mars. That's what Romany is, isn't
it--a refuge for people like that?"
"As a _latnik_, there's a lot you don't know. At this time, we cannot
help anyone. Sorry, Black. Please clear ship."
The screen went dead. Campbell stared at it with sultry eyes. Sorry.
The hell you're sorry. What gives here, anyway?
He thrust out an angry hand to the transmitter. And then, quite
suddenly, the Taxil was looking at him out of the screen.
The hostile look was gone. Anger replaced it, but not anger at
Campbell. The Taxil said, in a low, rapid voice:
"You're not lying about coming from the Kraylens?"
"No. No, I'm not lying." He opened his shirt to show the tattoo.
"The dirty scut! Mister Black, clear ship, and then make contact with
one of the outer hulks on the lowest tier. You'll find emergency
hatchways in some of the pipes. Come inside, and wait."
His dark eyes had a savage glitter. "There are some of us, Mister
Black, who still consider Romany a refuge!"
* * * * *
Campbell cleared ship. His nerves were singing in little tight jerks.
He'd stepped into something here. Something big and ugly. There had
been a certain ring in the Taxil's voice.
The thin, gravelly Mr. Tredrick had something on his mind, too.
Something important, about Kraylens. Why Kraylens, of all the
unimportant people on Venus?
Trouble on Romany. Romany the gypsy world, the Solar System's
stepchild. Strictly a family affair. What business did a Public Enemy
with a low number and a high valuation have mixing into that?
Then he thought of the drum beating in the indigo night, and an old man
watching _liha_-trees stir in a slow, hot wind.
Roy Campbell called himself a short, bitter name, and sighed,
and reached lean brown hands for the controls. Presently, in the
infra-field, he made out an ancient Krub freighter on the edge of the
lowest level, connected to companion wrecks by sections of twelve-foot
pipe. There was a hatch in one of the pipes, with a hand-wheel.
The Fitts-Sothern glided with exquisite daintiness to the pipe, touched
it gently, threw out her magnetic grapples and suction flanges, and
hung there. The airlock exactly covered the hatchway.
Campbell got up. He was sweating and as edgy as a tomcat on the prowl.
With great care he buckled his heavy gun around his narrow hips. Then
he went into the airlock.
He checked grapples and flanges with inordinate thoroughness. The
hatch-wheel jutted inside. He picked up a spanner and turned it, not
touching the frigid metal.
There was a crude barrel-lock beyond. Campbell ran his tongue once over
dry lips, shrugged, and climbed in.
He got through into a space that was black as the Coalsack. The air
was thin and bitingly cold. Campbell shivered in his silk shirt. He
laid his hand on his gun butt and took two cautious steps away from the
bulge of the lock, wishing to hell he were some place else.
Cold green light exploded out of nowhere behind him. He half turned,
his gun blurring into his palm. But he had no chance to fire it.
Something whipped down across the nerve-center in the side of his neck.
His body simply faded out of existence. He fell on his face and lay
there, struggling with all his might to move and achieving only a faint
twitching of the muscles.
He knew vaguely that someone rolled him over. He blinked up into the
green light, and heard a man's deep, soft voice say from the darkness
behind it:
"What made you think you could get away with it?"
Campbell tried three times before he could speak. "With what?"
"Spying. Does Tredrick think we're children?"
"I wouldn't know." It was easier to speak this time. His body was
beginning to fade in again, like something on a television screen.
He tried to close his hand. It didn't work very well, but it didn't
matter. His gun was gone.
Something moved across the light. A man's body, a huge, supple,
muscular thing the color of dark bronze. It knelt with a terrible
tigerish ease beside Campbell, the bosses on its leather kilt making a
clinking noise. There was a jeweled gorget of reddish metal around the
base of its throat. The stones had a wicked glitter.
The deep, soft voice said, "Who are you?"
Campbell tried to force the returning life faster through his body. The
man's face was in shadow. Campbell looked up with sultry, furious eyes
and achieved a definite motion toward getting up.
The kneeling giant put out his right arm. The green light burned on it.
Campbell's eyes followed it down toward his throat. His face became a
harsh, irregular mask cut from dark wood.
The arm was heavily, beautifully muscled. But where the hand should
have been there was a leather harness and a hook of polished Martian
bronze.
* * * * *
Campbell knew what had struck him. The thin, hard curve of that hook,
more potent than the edge of any hand.
The point pricked his throat, just over the pulse on the left side. The
man said softly:
"Lie still, little man, and answer."
Campbell lay still. There was nothing else to do. He said, "I'm Thomas
Black, if that helps. Who are you?"
"What did Tredrick tell you to do?"
"To get the hell out. What gives with you?" If that Taxil was spreading
the word about him, he'd better hurry. Campbell decided to take a
chance. The guy with the hook didn't seem to love Tredrick.
"The black boy in the radio room told me to come aboard and wait. Seems
he's sore at Tredrick, too. So am I. That makes us all pals, doesn't
it?"
"You lie, little man." The deep voice was quietly certain. "You were
sent to spy. Answer!"
The point of the hook put the exclamation point on that word. Campbell
winced away. He wished the lug wouldn't call him "little man." He
wouldn't remember ever having felt more hopelessly scared.
He said, "Damn your eyes, I'm not lying. Check with the Taxil. He'll
tell you."
"And betray him to Tredrick? You're clumsy, little man."
The hook bit deeper. Campbell's neck began to bleed. He felt all right
again otherwise. He wondered whether he'd have a chance of kicking the
man in the stomach before his throat was torn out. He tried to draw
farther away, but the pipe wall wouldn't give.
A woman's voice spoke then, quite suddenly, from beyond the green
light. Campbell jumped. He hadn't even thought about anyone else being
there. Now it was obvious that someone was holding the light.
The voice said, "Wait, Marah. Zard is calling me now."
It was a clear, low voice. It had music in it. Campbell would have
loved it if it had croaked, but as it was it made his nerves prick with
sheer ecstasy.
The hook lifted out of the hole it had made, but it didn't go away.
Campbell raised his head a little. The lower edge of the green light
spilled across a pair of sandalled feet. The bare white legs above them
were as beautiful as the voice, in the same strong clear way.
There was a long silence. Marah, the man with the hook, turned his face
partly into the light. It was oblong and scarred and hard as beaten
bronze. The eyes in it were smoky ember, set aslant under a tumbled
crest of tawny hair.
After a long time the woman spoke again. Her voice was different this
time. It was angry, and the anger made it sing and throb like the
Kraylen's drum.
"The Earthman is telling the truth, Marah. Zard sent him. He's here
about the Kraylens."
The big man--a Martian Drylander, Campbell thought, from somewhere
around Kesh--got up, fast. "The Kraylens!"
"He asked for help, and Tredrick sent him away." The light moved
closer. "But that's not all, Marah. Tredrick has found out about--us.
Old Ekla talked. They're waiting for us at the ship!"
III
Marah turned. His eyes had a greenish, feral glint like those of a lion
on the kill. He said, "I'm sorry, little man."
Campbell was on his feet, now, and reasonably steady. "Think nothing
of it," he said dourly. "A natural mistake." He looked at the hook and
mopped the blood from his neck, and felt sick. He added, "The name's
Black. Thomas Black."
"It wouldn't be Campbell?" asked the woman's voice. "Roy Campbell?"
He squinted into the light, not saying anything. The woman said, "You
are Roy Campbell. The Spaceguard was here not long ago, hunting for
you. They left your picture."
He shrugged. "All right. I'm Roy Campbell."
"That," said Marah softly, "helps a lot!" He could have meant it any
way. His hook made a small, savage flash in the green light.
"There's trouble here on Romany. Civil war. Men are going to be killed
before it's over--perhaps now. Where's your place in it?"
"How do I know? The Coalition is moving in on the Kraylens. I owe them
something. So I came here for help. Help! Yeah."
"You'll get it," said the woman. "You'll get it, somehow, if any of us
live."
Campbell raised his dark brows. "What goes on here, anyhow?"
The woman's low voice sang and throbbed against the pipe walls. "A
long time ago there were a few ships. Old ships, crowded with people
who had no homes. Little, drifting people who made a living selling
their odd handicrafts in the spaceports, who were cursed as a menace to
navigation and distrusted as thieves. Perhaps they were thieves. They
were also cold, and hungry, and resentful.
"After a while the ships began to band together. It was easier that
way--they could share food and fuel, and talk, and exchange ideas.
Space wasn't so lonely. More and more ships drifted in. Pretty soon
there were a lot of them. A new world, almost.
"They called it Romany, after the wandering people of Earth, because
they were gypsies, too, in their own way.
"They clung to their own ways of life. They traded with the noisy,
trampling people on the planets they had been driven away from because
they had to. But they hated them, and were hated, just as gypsies
always are.
"It wasn't an easy life, but they were free in it. They could stand
anything, as long as they were free. And always, anywhere in the Solar
System, wherever some little lost tribe was being swallowed up and
needed help, ships from Romany went to help them."
Her voice dropped. Campbell thought again of the Kraylen's drum,
singing its anger in the indigo night.
"That was the creed of Romany," she whispered. "Always to help, always
to be a refuge for the little people who couldn't adjust themselves to
progress, who only wanted to die in dignity and peace. And now...."
"And now," said Marah somberly, "there is civil war."
* * * * *
Campbell drew a long, unsteady breath. The woman's voice throbbed in
him, and his throat was tight. He said "_Tredrick?_"
Marah nodded. "Tredrick. But it's more than that. If it were only
Tredrick, it wouldn't be so bad."
He ran the curve of his hook over his scarred chin, and his eyes burned
like candle flames.
"Romany is growing old, and soft. That's the real trouble. Decay.
Otherwise, Tredrick would have been kicked into space long ago. There
are old men in the Council, Campbell. They think more of comfort than
they do of--well...."
"Yeah. I know. What's Tredrick's angle?"
"I don't know. He's a strange man--you can't get a grip on him.
Sometimes I think he's working for the Coalition."
Campbell scowled. "Could be. You gypsies have a lot of wild talents and
some unique skills--I've met some of 'em. The man that controlled them
would be sitting pretty. The Coalition would like it, too."
The woman said bitterly, "And they could always exhibit us. Tours, at
so much a head. So quaint--a cross-section of a lost world!"
"Tredrick's the strong man," Marah went on. "Eran Mak is Chief
Councillor, but he does as Tredrick tells him. The idea is that if
Romany settled down and stops getting into trouble with the Planetary
Coalitions, we can have regular orbits, regular trade, and so on."
"In other words," said Campbell dryly, "stop being Romany."
"You understand. A pet freak, a tourist attraction, a fat source of
revenue." Again the savage flash of the hook. "A damned circus!"
"And Tredrick, I take it, has decided that you're endangering the
future of Romany by rebellion, and put the finger on you."
"Exactly." Marah's yellow eyes were bright and hard, meeting Campbell's.
Campbell thought about the Fitts-Sothern outside, and all the lonely
reaches of space where he could go. There were lots of Coalition ships
to rob, a few plague-spots left to spend the loot in. All he had to do
was walk out.
But there was a woman's voice, with a note in it like a singing, angry
drum. There was an old man's voice, murmuring, "Little people like you,
my son?"
It was funny, how a guy could be alone and not know he minded it,
and then suddenly walk in on perfect strangers and not be alone any
more--alone inside, that is--and know that he _had_ minded it like hell.
It had been that way with the Kraylens. It was that way now. Campbell
shrugged. "I'll stick around."
He added irritably, "Sister, will you for Pete's sake get that light
out of my eyes?"
She moved it, shining it down. "The name's Moore. Stella Moore."
He grinned. "Sorry. So you do have a face, after all."
It wasn't beautiful. It was pale and heart-shaped, framed in a mass of
unruly red-gold hair. There were long, grey eyes under dark-gold brows
that had never been plucked, and a red, sullen mouth.
Her teeth were white and uneven, when she smiled. He liked them. The
red of her sullen lips was their own. She wore a short tunic the color
of Tokay grapes, and the body under it was long and clean-cut. Her
arms and throat had the whiteness of pearl.
Marah said quietly, "Contact Zard. Tell him to throw the PA system wide
open and say we're taking the ship, now, to get the Kraylens!"
* * * * *
Stella stood absolutely still. Her grey eyes took on an eerie, remote
look, and Campbell shivered slightly. He'd seen telepathy often enough
in the System's backwaters, but it never seemed normal.
Presently she said, "It's done," and became human again. The green
light went out. "Power," she explained. "Besides, we don't need it.
Give me your hand, Mister Campbell."
He did, with absolutely no aversion. "My friends," he said, "generally
call me Roy." She laughed, and they started off, moving with quick
sureness in the black, icy darkness.
The ship, it seemed, was up on the second level, on the edge of the
living quarters. Down here was all the machinery that kept Romany
alive--heat, light, water, air, and cooling systems--and a lot of
storage hulks.
The third tier was a vast hydroponic farm, growing the grain and fruit
and vegetables that fed the Romany thousands.
Stumbling through pipes and dismantled hulks that smelled of sacking
and dried vegetables and oil, Campbell filled in the gaps.
The leaders of the rebel element had held a meeting down here, in
secret. Marah and the girl had been coming from it when Campbell
blundered into them. The decision had been to rescue the Kraylens no
matter what happened.
They'd known about the Kraylens long before Campbell had. Gypsies
trading in Lhi had brought word. Now the Kraylens were a symbol over
which two points of view were clashing in deadly earnest.
Remembering Tredrick's thin, harsh face, Campbell wondered uneasily how
many of them _would_ live to take that ship away.
He became aware gradually of a broken, rhythmic tap and clank
transmitted along the metal walls.
"Hammers," said Stella softly. "Hammers and riveters and welders,
fighting rust and age to keep Romany alive. There's no scrap of this
world that wasn't discarded as junk, and reclaimed by us."
Her voice dropped. "Including the people."
Campbell said, "They're scrapping some beautiful things these days."
She knew what he meant. She even laughed a little. "I was born on
Romany. There are a lot of Earth people who have no place at home."
"I know." Campbell remembered his father's farm, with blue cold water
over the fields instead of sky. "And Tredrick?"
"He was born here, too. But the taint is in him...." She caught her
breath in a sudden sharp cry. "Marah! Marah, _it's Zard_!"
They stopped. A pulse began to beat under Campbell's jaw. Stella
whispered, "He's gone. I felt him call, and now he's gone. He was
trying to warn us."
Marah said grimly, "Tredrick's got him, then. Probably knocked him out
while he was trying to escape from the radio room."
"He was frightened," said Stella quietly. "Tredrick has done something.
He wanted to warn us."
Marah grunted. "Have your gun ready, Campbell. We go up, now."
* * * * *
They went up a wooden ladder. It was suddenly getting hot. Campbell
guessed that Romany was in the sun again. The Martian opened a door at
the top, very, very slowly.
A young, vibrant voice sang out, "All clear!" They piled out of the
doorway. Four or five husky young Paniki barbarians from Venus stood
grinning beside two bound and slumbering Earthmen.
Campbell stared past them. The air was still and hot, hung with veils
of steamy mist. There was mossy earth dotted with warm pools. There
were _liha_-trees, sultry green under a pearly light that was still
brightening out of indigo gloom.
A slow, hot breath of wind stirred the mist and _liha_-trees. It smelt
of warm still water and growing things, and--freedom.
Campbell drew a long breath. His eyes stung and the veins in his
neck hurt. He knew it was a dead hulk, with an iron sky above the
pearl-grey mist. But it smelt of freedom.
He said, "What are we waiting for?"
Marah laughed, and the young Venusian laughed. Barbarians, going to
fight and laughing about it. Stella's grey eyes held a sultry flame,
and her lips were blood-orange and trembling.
Campbell kissed them. He laughed, too, softly, and said, "Okay, Gypsy.
Let's go."
They went, through the seven hulks of the Venusian Quarter. Because of
the Kraylens, most of the Venusians were with the rebels, but even so
there were angry voices raised, and fists, and a few weapons, and some
blood got spilled.
More tow-headed young men joined them, and squat little upland nomads
who could talk to animals, and three four-armed, serpentine crawlers
from the Lohari swamps.
They came presently to a huge dismantled Hoyt freighter on the edge of
the Venusian Quarter. There were piles of goods waiting lading through
the row of airlocks into smaller trading ships. Marah stopped, his
gorget shooting wicked jeweled sparks in the sunlight that seared in
through half-shuttered ports, and the others flowed in behind him.
They were on a narrow gallery about halfway up the inner wall. Campbell
looked down. There were people on the ladders and the two balcony
levels below. A sullen, ugly mob of people from Earth, from Venus, from
Mars and Mercury and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
Men and near-men and sheer monstrosities, silent and watching in the
hot light. Here a crest of scarlet antennae burning, there the sinuous
flash of a scaled back, and beyond that the slow ominous weaving of
light-black tentacles.
A creature like a huge blue spider with a child's face let out a shrill
unearthly scream. "Traitor! Traitor!"
The whole packed mass on the ladders and the galleries stirred like a
weird tapestry caught in a gust of wind. The rushing whisper of their
movement, their breathing, and their anger sang across Campbell's
nerves in points of fire.
Anger. Anger in the Kraylen's drum and Stella's voice and Marah's
yellow eyes. Anger like the sunlight, hot and primal. The anger of
little men flogged into greatness.
A voice spoke from across the deck below, cold, clear, without the
faintest tremor.
"We want no trouble. Return to your quarters quietly."
"_The Kraylens!_"
The name came thundering out of all those angry throats, beating down
against the gaunt, erect figure standing in the forefront of a circle
of Earthmen guarding the locks with ready guns.
Tredrick's thin, red head never stirred from its poised erectness.
"The Kraylens are out of your hands, now. They harbored a dangerous
criminal, and they are now being imprisoned in Lhi to answer for it."
Roy Campbell gripped the iron railing in front of him. It seemed to him
that he could see, across all that space, the cold, bright flame of
satisfaction in Tredrick's eyes.
The thin, calm voice slid across his eardrums with the cruel
impersonality of a surgeon's knife.
"That criminal, Roy Campbell, is now on Romany. The Spaceguard is on
its way here now. For the sake of the safety of your families, for the
future of Romany, I advise no one to hide him or help him escape."
IV
Campbell stood still, not moving or speaking, his hard, dark face
lined and dead, like old wood. From a great distance he heard Marah's
smothered, furious curse, the quick catch of Stella's breath, the
sullen breathing and stirring of the mob that was no longer sure what
it wanted to do.
But all he could see was the pale, kind face of an old man smiling in
the warm, blue night, and the dirty, sordid stones of Lhi.
A voice spoke, from beside the circle of armed men. Campbell heard it
with some part of his brain. An old voice, dry and rustling, possessed
of great dignity and great pain.
"My children," it said. "Have patience. Have faith that we, your
leaders, have the good of Romany at heart."
Campbell looked with dead, dark eyes at the speaker, standing beside
Tredrick. A small man in a robe of white fur. A Martian from one of the
Polar Cities, frail, black-eyed grave, and gently strong.
"Remember the cold, the hunger, the uncertainty we have endured. We
have a chance now for security and peace. Let there be no trouble, now
or when the Spaceguard comes. Return to your quarters quietly."
"Trouble!" Marah's voice roared out across the hot, still air. Every
face down there below turned up toward the balcony. Campbell saw
Tredrick start, and speak to one of the guards. The guard went out, not
too fast. Campbell swore under his breath, and his brain began to tick
over again, swift and hard.
Marah thundered on, a bronze Titan in the sultry glare. His gorget, his
yellow eyes, the bosses on his kilt held points of angry flame.
"You, Eran Mak, a Martian! Have you forgotten Kesh, and Balakar, and
the Wells of Tamboina? Can you crawl to the Coalition like a _sindar_
for the sake of the bones they throw you? You, Tredrick! You've sold
us out. Since when have _latniks_ been called to meddle in Romany's
affairs?"
Tredrick's cold voice was quite steady. "The Kraylens are beyond reach,
Marah. A revolt will get you nothing. Do you want blood on your hands?"
"My hand," said Marah softly. His hook made a burning, vicious arc in
the hot light. "If there's blood on this, the Coalition spilled it when
their Frontier Marshal lopped my sword-hand for raising it against him."
The mob stirred and muttered. And Campbell said swiftly, "Tredrick's
right. But there's still a chance, if you want to take it."
Stella Moore put a hand on Marah's arm. "How?"
Tredrick was still pretending he hadn't seen Campbell, pretending there
weren't men crawling through dark tunnels to trap him.
"It'll mean trouble. It may mean death or imprisonment. It's a
million-to-one shot. You'd better give me up and forget it."
The point of Marah's hook pricked under his jaw. "Speak quickly,
little man!"
"Okay. Tell 'em to behave. Then get me out of here, fast!"
* * * * *
Tredrick's men knew their way around. A lot of gypsies, moreover, who
weren't with Tredrick, joined the hunt for the _latnik_. They didn't
want trouble with the Spaceguard.
Campbell stumbled through a maze of dark and stifling passages, holding
Stella's hand and thinking of the Spaceguard ships sweeping closer.
They were almost caught a dozen times, trying to get across Romany to
the Fitts-Sothern.
The hunt seemed to be an outlet for the pent feelings of Romany.
Campbell decided he would never go hunting again. And then, just above
where his ship lay, they stepped into a trap.
They were in the Saturnian Quarter, in the hulk devoted to refugees
from Titan. There were coolers working here. There was snow on the
barren rocks, glimmering in weird light like a dark rainbow.
"The caves," said Stella Moore. "The Baraki."
There was an echoing clamor of voices all around them, footsteps
clattering over metal and icy rock. They ran, breathing hard.
There were some low cliffs, and a ledge, and then caves with queer
blue-violet fires burning in them.
Creatures sat at the cave mouths. They were small, vaguely anthropoid,
dead white, and unpleasantly rubbery. They were quite naked, and their
single eyes were phosphorescent. Marah knelt.
"Little Fathers, we ask shelter in the name of freedom."
The shouts and the footsteps were closer. There was sweat on Campbell's
forehead. One of the white things nodded slightly.
"No disturbance," it whispered. "We will have no disturbance of our
thoughts. You may shelter, to stop this ugly noise."
"Thank you, Little Father." Marah plunged into the cave, with the
others on his heels. Campbell snarled, "They'll come and take us!"
Stella's sullen lips smiled wolfishly. "No. Watch."
The cave, the violet fire were suddenly gone. There was a queer
darkness, a small electric shiver across Campbell's skin. He started,
and the girl whispered:
"Telekinesis. They've built a wall of force around us. On the outside
it seems to be rock like the cave wall."
Marah moved, the bosses on his kilt clinking slightly. "When the swine
are gone, there's a trap in this hulk leading down to the pipe where
your ship is. Now tell us your plan."
Campbell made a short, bitter laugh. "Plan, hell. It's a gamble on a
fixed wheel, and you're fools if you play it."
"And if we don't?"
"I'm going anyway. The Kraylens--well, I owe them something."
"Tell us the plan."
He did, in rapid nervous sentences, crouched behind the shielding wall
of thought from those alien brains. Marah laughed softly.
"By the gods, little man, you should have been a Keshi!"
"I can think of a lot of things I should have been," said Campbell
dourly. "Hey, there goes our wall."
It hadn't been more than four minutes. Long enough for them to look and
go away again. There might still be time, before the Spaceguard came.
There was, just. The getaway couldn't have been more perfectly timed.
Campbell grinned, feeding power into his jets with exquisite skill.
He didn't have a Chinaman's chance. He thought probably the gypsies had
less than that of coming through. But the Kraylens weren't going to rot
in the slave-pens of Lhi because of Roy Campbell.
Not while Roy Campbell was alive to think about it. And that, of
course, might not be long.
He sent the Fitts-Sothern shooting toward the night side of Venus, in
full view and still throttled down. The Spaceguard ships, nine fast
patrol boats, took out after him, giving Romany the go-by. No use
stopping there. No mistaking that lean, black ship, or whose hands were
on the controls.
Campbell stroked the firing keys, and the Fitts-Sothern purred under
him like a cat. Just for a second he couldn't see clearly.
"I'm sorry, old girl," he said. "But that's how it has to be."
* * * * *
It was a beautiful chase. The Guard ships pulled every trick they knew,
and they knew plenty. Campbell hunched over the keys, sweating, his
dark face set in a grin that held no mirth. Only his hands moved, with
nervous, delicate speed.
It was the ship that did it. They slapped tractors on her, and she
broke them. They tried to encircle her, and she walked away from them.
That slight edge of power, that narrow margin of speed, pulled Roy
Campbell away from what looked like instant, easy capture.
He got into the shadow, and then the Spaceguard began to get scared
as well as angry. They stopped trying to capture him. They unlimbered
their blasters and went to work.
Campbell was breathing hard now, through his teeth. His dark skin was
oiled with sweat, pulled tight over the bones and the ridges of muscle
and the knotted veins. Deliberately, he slowed a little.
A bolt flamed past the starboard ports. He slowed still more, and
veered the slightest bit. The Fitts-Sothern was alive under his hands.
He didn't speak when the next bolt struck her. Not even to curse. He
didn't know he was crying until he tasted the salt on his lips. He got
up out of the pilot's seat, and then he said one word:
"_Judas!_"
The follow-up of the first shot blasted the control panel. It knocked
him back across the cockpit, seared and scorched from the fusing metal.
He got up, somehow, and down the passage to the lock compartment. There
was a lot of blood running from his cheek, but he didn't care.
He could feel the ship dying under him. The timers were shot. She was
running away in a crazy, blind spiral, racking her plates apart.
He climbed into his vac-suit. It was a special one, black even to the
helmet, with a super-powerful harness-rocket with a jet illegally
baffled. He hoped his hands weren't too badly burned.
The ship checked brutally, flinging him hard into the bulkhead.
Tractors! He clawed toward the lock, an animal whimper in his throat.
He hoped he wasn't going to be sick inside the helmet.
The panel opened. Air blasted him out, into jet-black space. The tiny
spearing flame of the harness-rocket flickered briefly and died,
unnoticed among the trailing fires of the derelict.
Campbell lay quite still in the blackened suit. The Spaceguard ships
flared by, playing the Fitts-Sothern like a tarpon on the lines of
their tractor beams. Campbell closed his eyes and cursed them, slowly
and without expression, until the tightness in his throat choked him
off.
He let them get a long way off. Then he pressed the plunger of the
rocket, heading down for the night-shrouded swamps of Tehara Province.
He retained no very clear memory of the trip. Once, when he was quite
low, a spaceship blazed by over him, heading toward Lhi. There were
still about eight hours' darkness over the swamps.
He landed, eventually, in a clearing he was pretty sure only he knew
about. He'd used it before when he'd had stuff to fence in Lhi and
wasn't sure who owned the town at the time. He'd learned to be careful
about those things.
There was a ship there now, a smallish trader of the inter-lunar type.
He stared at it, not really believing it was there. Then, just in time,
he got the helmet off.
When the world stopped turning over, he was lying with his head in
Stella Moore's lap. She had changed her tunic for plain spaceman's
black, and it made her face look whiter and lovelier in its frame of
black hair. Her lips were still sullen, and still red.
Campbell sat up and kissed them. He felt much better. Not good, but he
thought he'd live. Stella laughed and said, "Well! You're recovering."
He said, "Sister, you're good medicine for anything." A hand which he
recognized as Marah's materialized out of the indigo gloom. It had a
flask in it. Campbell accepted it gladly. Presently the icy deadness
around his stomach thawed out and he could see things better.
He got up, rather unsteadily, and fumbled for a cigarette. His shirt
had been mostly blown and charred off of him and his hands hurt like
hell. Stella gave him a smoke and a light. He sucked it in gratefully
and said:
"Okay, kids. Are we all ready?"
They were.
* * * * *
Campbell led off. He drained the flask and was pleased to find himself
firing on all jets again. He felt empty and relaxed and ready for
anything. He hoped the liquor wouldn't wear off too soon.
There was a path threaded through the hammocks, the bogs and potholes
and reeds and _liha_-trees. Only Campbell, who had made it, could have
followed it. Remembering his blind stumbling in the mazes of Romany, he
felt pleased about that. He said, rather smugly:
"Be careful not to slip. How'd you fix the getaway?"
Marah made a grim little laugh. "Romany was a madhouse, hunting for
you. Some of the hot-headed boys started minor wars over policy on top
of that. Tredrick had to use most of his men to keep order. Besides, of
course, he thought we were beaten on the Kraylen question."
"There were only four men guarding the locks," said Stella. "Marah and
a couple of the Paniki boys took care of them."
Campbell remembered the spaceship flashing toward Lhi. He told them
about it. "Could be Tredrick, coming to supervise our defeat in
person." Defeat! It was because he was a little tight, of course, but
he didn't think anyone could defeat him this night. He laughed.
Something rippled out of the indigo night to answer his laughter.
Something so infinitely sweet and soft that it made him want to cry,
and then shocked him with the deep and iron power in it. Campbell
looked back over his shoulder. He thought:
"Me, hell. These are the guys who'll do it, if it's done."
Stella was behind him. Beyond her was a thin, small man with four arms.
He wore no clothing but his own white fur and his head was crowned with
feathery antennae. Even in the blue night the antennae and the man's
eyes burned living scarlet.
He came from Callisto and he carried in his four hands a thing vaguely
like a harp, only the strings were double banked. It was the harp that
had spoken. Campbell hoped it would never speak against him.
Marah brought up the rear, swinging along with no regard for the burden
he bore. Over his naked shoulder, Campbell could see the still white
face of the Baraki from Titan, the Little Father who had saved them
from the hunters. There were tentacles around Marah's big body like
white ropes.
Four gypsies and a Public Enemy. Five little people against the
Terro-Venusian Coalition. It didn't make sense.
A hot, slow wind stirred the _liha_-trees. Campbell breathed it in,
and grinned. "What does?" he wondered, and stooped to part a tangle of
branches. There was a stone-lined tunnel beyond.
"Here we go, children. Join hands and make like little mousies." He
took Stella's hand in his left. Because it was Stella's he didn't mind
the way it hurt. In his right, he held his gun.
V
He led them, quickly and quietly, along the disused branch of an old
drainage system that he had used so often as a private entrance.
Presently they dropped to a lower level and the conduit system proper.
When the rains were on, the drains would be running full. Now they were
only pumping seepage. They waded in pitch darkness, by-passed a pumping
station through a side tunnel once used for cold storage by one of
Lhi's cautious business men, and then found steep, slippery steps going
up.
"Careful," whispered Campbell. He stopped them on a narrow ledge and
stood listening. The Callistan murmured, with faint amusement:
"There is no one beyond."
Antennae over ears. Campbell grinned and found a hidden spring. "Lhi
is full of these things," he said. "The boys used to keep their little
wars going just for fun, and every smart guy had several bolt holes.
Maps used to sell high."
They emerged in a very deep, very dark cellar. It was utterly still.
Campbell felt a little sad. He could remember when Martian Mak's was
the busiest thieves' market in Lhi, and a man could hear the fighting
even here. He smiled bitterly and led the way upstairs.
Presently they looked down on the main gate, the main square, and the
slave pens of Lhi. The surrounding streets were empty, the buildings
mostly dark. The Coalition had certainly cleaned up when it took over
the town. It was horribly depressing.
Campbell pointed. "Reception committee. Tredrick radioed, anyway.
One'll get you twenty he followed it up in person."
The gate was floodlighted over a wide area and there were a lot
of tough-looking men with heavy-duty needle guns. In this day of
anaesthetic charges you could do a lot of effective shooting without
doing permanent damage. There were more lights and more men by the
slave pens.
Campbell couldn't see much over the high stone walls of the pens. Vague
movement, the occasional flash of a brilliant crest. He had known the
Kraylens would be there. It was the only place in Lhi where you could
imprison a lot of people and be sure of keeping them.
Campbell's dark face was cruel. "Okay," he said. "Let's go."
* * * * *
Down the stone steps to the entrance. Stella's quick breathing in
the hot darkness, the rhythmic clink of the bosses on Marah's kilt.
Campbell saw the eyes of the Callistan harper, glowing red and angry.
He realized he was sweating. He had forgotten his burns.
Stella opened the heavy steel-sheathed door. Quietly, slowly. The
Baraki whispered, "Put me down."
Marah set him gently on the stone floor. He folded in upon himself,
tentacles around white, rubbery flesh. His single eye burned with a
cold phosphorescence.
He whispered, "Now."
The Callistan harper went to the door. Reflected light painted him
briefly, white fur and scarlet crest and outlandish harp, and the
glowing, angry eyes.
He vanished. Out of nowhere the harp began to sing.
Through the partly opened door Campbell had a clear view of the square
and the gate. In all that glare of light on empty stone nothing moved.
And yet the music rippled out.
The guards. Campbell could see the startled glitter of their eyeballs
in the light. There was nothing to shoot at. The harping was part of
the night, as all-enveloping and intangible.
Campbell shivered. A pulse beat like a trip-hammer under his jaw.
Stella's voice came to him, a faint breath out of the darkness.
"The Baraki is shielding him with thought. A wall of force that turns
the light."
The edge of the faint light touched her cheek, the blackness of her
hair. Marah crouched beyond her, motionless. His hook glinted dully,
curved and cruel.
They were getting only the feeble backwash of the harping. The
Callistan was aiming his music outward. Campbell felt it sweep and
tremble, blend with the hot slow wind and the indigo sky.
It was some trick of vibrations, some diabolical thrusting of notes
against the brain like fingers, to press and control. Something about
the double-banked strings thrumming against each other under the
cunning of four skilled hands. But it was like witchcraft.
"The Harp of Dagda," whispered Stella Moore, and the Irish music in her
voice was older than time. The Scot in Campbell answered it.
Somewhere outside a man cursed, thickly, like one drugged with sleep
and afraid of it. A gun went off with a sharp slapping sound. Some of
the guards had fallen down.
The harp sang louder, throbbing along the grey stones. It was the slow
wind, the heat, the deep blue night. It was sleep.
The floodlights blazed on empty stone, and the guards slept.
The Baraki sighed and shivered and closed his eye. Campbell saw the
Callistan harper standing in the middle of the square, his scarlet
crest erect, striking the last thrumming note.
Campbell straightened, catching his breath in a ragged sob. Marah
picked up the Baraki. He was limp, like a tired child. Stella's eyes
were glistening and strange. Campbell went out ahead of them.
It was a long way across the square, in the silence and the glaring
lights. Campbell thought the harp was a nice weapon. It didn't attract
attention because everyone who heard it slept.
He flung back the three heavy bars of the slave gate. The pain of his
burned hands jarred him out of the queer mood the harping and his
Celtic blood had put on him. He began to think again.
"Hurry!" he snarled at the Kraylens. "Hurry up!" They came pouring out
of the gate. Men, women with babies, little children. Their crests
burned in the sullen glare.
Campbell pointed to Marah. "Follow him." They recognized him, tried to
speak, but he cursed them on. And then an old man said,
"My son."
Campbell looked at him, and then down at the stones. "For God's sake,
Father, hurry." A hand touched his shoulder gently. He looked up again,
and grinned. He couldn't see anything. "Get the hell on, will you?"
Somebody found the switch and the nearer lights went out.
The hand pressed his shoulder, and was gone. He shook his head
savagely. The Kraylens were running now, toward the house. And then,
suddenly, Marah yelled.
Men were running into the square. Eight or ten of them, probably
the bodyguard of the burly grey-haired man who led them. Beside the
grey-haired man was Tredrick, Overchief of the Terran Quarter of Romany.
* * * * *
They were startled. They hadn't been expecting this. Campbell's
battle-trained eye saw that. Probably they had been making a routine
tour of inspection and just stumbled onto the crash-out.
[Illustration: _Campbell swung about, blasted shots at Tredrick and his
men, while Stella pressed the Kraylens to greater speed in escaping._]
Campbell fired, from the hip. Anaesthetic needles sprayed into the
close-packed group. Two of them went down. The rest scattered, dropping
flat. Campbell wished there had been time to kill the gate lights. At
least, the shadows made shooting tricky.
He bent over and began to run, guarding the rear of the Kraylen's line.
Stella, in the cover of the doorway, was laying down a methodical wall
of needles. Campbell grinned.
Some of the Kraylens caught it and had to be carried. That slowed
things down. Campbell's gun clicked empty. He shoved in another clip,
cursing his burned fingers. A charge sang by him, close enough to stir
his hair. He fired again, blanketing the whole sector where the men
lay. He wished he could blow Tredrick's head off.
The Kraylens were vanishing into the house. Marah and the Callistan had
gone ahead, leading them. Campbell groaned. Speed was what they needed.
Speed. A child, separated from his mother in the rush, knelt on the
stones and shrieked. Campbell picked him up and ran on.
Enemy fire was slackening. Stella was doing all right. The last of the
Kraylens shoved through the door. Campbell bounded up the steps. Stella
got up off her belly and smiled at him. Her eyes shone. They were
halfway through the door when the cold voice said behind them,
"There are lethal needles in my gun. You had better stop."
Campbell turned slowly. His face was wooden. Tredrick stood at the
bottom of the steps. He must have crawled around the edge of the
square, where the shadows were thick under the walls.
"Drop your gun, Campbell. And you, Stella Moore."
Campbell dropped it. Tredrick might be bluffing about those needles.
But a Mickey at this stage of the game would be just as fatal. Stella's
gun clattered beside him. She didn't say anything, but her face was
coldly murderous.
Tredrick said evenly, "You might as well call them back, Campbell. You
led them in, but you're not going to lead them out."
It was funny, Campbell thought, how a man's voice could be so cold when
his eyes had fire in them. He said sullenly,
"Okay, Tredrick. You win. But what's the big idea behind this?"
Tredrick's face might have been cut from granite, except for the feral
eyes. "I was born on Romany. I froze and starved in those rotten hulks.
I hated it. I hated the darkness, the loneliness, the uncertainty. But
when I said I hated it, I got a beating.
"Everybody else thought it was worth it. I didn't. They talked about
freedom, but Romany was a prison to me. I wanted to grow, and I was
stifled inside it. Then I got an idea.
"If I could rule Romany and make a treaty with the Coalition, I'd have
money and power. And I could fix it so no more kids would be brought up
that way, cold and hungry and scared.
"Marah opposed me, and then the Kraylens became an issue." Tredrick
smiled, but there was no mirth or softness in it. "It's a good thing.
The Coalition can take of Marah and you others who were mixed up in
this. My way is clear."
Stella Moore said softly between her teeth, "They'll never forgive you
for turning Romany people over to the _latniks_. There'll be war."
Tredrick nodded soberly. "No great change is made without bloodshed.
I'm sorry for that. But Romany will be happier."
"We don't ask to be happy. We only ask to be free."
Campbell said wearily, "Stella, take the kid, will you?" He held out
the little Kraylen, droopy and quiet now. She looked at him in quick
alarm. His feet were spread but not steady, his head sunk forward.
She took the child. Campbell's knees sagged. One seared arm in a
tattered green sleeve came up to cover his face. The other groped
blindly along the wall. He dropped, rather slowly, to his knees.
The groping hand fell across the gun by Stella's foot. In one quick
sweep of motion Campbell got it, threw it, and followed it with his own
body.
* * * * *
The gun missed, but it came close enough to Tredrick's face to make him
move his head. The involuntary muscular contraction of his whole body
spoiled his aim. The charge went past Campbell into the wall.
They crashed down together on the stones. Campbell gripped Tredrick's
wrist, knew he couldn't hold it, let go with one hand and slashed
backward with his elbow at Tredrick's face.
The gun let off again, harmlessly, Tredrick groaned. His arm was
weaker. Campbell thrashed over and got his knee on it. Tredrick's other
fist was savaging his already tortured body.
Campbell brought his fist down into Tredrick's face. He did it twice,
and wept and cursed because he was suddenly too weak to lift his arm
again. Tredrick was bleeding, but far from out. His gun was coming up
again. He didn't have much play, but enough.
Campbell set his teeth. He couldn't even see Tredrick, but he swung
again. He never knew whether he connected or not.
Something thrummed past his head. He couldn't say he heard it. It was
more like feeling. But it was something deadly, and strange. Tredrick
didn't make a sound. Campbell knew suddenly that he was dead.
He got up, very slow, shaking and cold. The Callistan harper stood in
the doorway. He was lowering his hands, and his eyes were living coals.
He didn't say anything. Neither did Stella. But she laughed, and the
child stirred and whimpered in her arms.
Campbell went to her. She looked at him with queer eyes and whispered,
"I called him with my mind. I knew he'd kill."
He took her face in his two hands. "Listen, Stella. You've got to lead
them back. You've got to touch my mind with yours and let me guide you
that way, back to the ship."
Her eyes widened sharply. "But you can come. He's dead. You're free
now."
"No." He could feel her throat quiver under his hands. Her blood was
beating. So was his. He said harshly,
"You fool, do you think they'll let you get away with this? You're
tackling the Coalition. They can't afford to look silly. They've got to
have a scapegoat, something to save face!
"Romany, so far, is beyond planetary control. Slap your tractors on
her, tow her out. Clear out to Saturn if you have to. Nobody saw
the Callistan. Nobody saw anybody but me and the Kraylens and an
unidentifiable somebody up here on the porch. Nobody, that is, but
Tredrick, and he won't talk. Do you understand?"
She did, but she was still rebellious. Her sullen lips were angry, her
eyes bright with tears and challenging. "But you, Roy!"
He took his hands away. "Damn you, woman! If I hide out on Romany I
bring you into Spaceguard jurisdiction. I'll be trapped, and Romany's
last chance to stay free will be gone."
She said stubbornly, "But you can get away. There are ships."
"Oh, sure. But the Kraylens are there. You can't hide them. The
Coalition will search Romany. They'll ask questions. I tell you they've
got to have a goat!"
He was really weak, now. He hoped he could hold out. He hoped he
wouldn't do anything disgraceful. He turned away from her, looking out
at the square. Some of the guards were beginning to stir.
"Will you go?" he said. "Will you get to hell out?"
She put her hand on him. "Roy...."
He jerked away. His dark face was set and cruel. "Do you have to make
it harder? Do you think I want to rot on Phobos in their stinking
mines, with shackles on my feet?" He swung around, challenging her with
savage eyes.
"How else do you think Romany is going to stay free? You can't go on
playing cat and mouse with the big shots this way. They're getting sick
of it. They'll pass laws and tie you down. Somebody's got to spread
Romany all over the Solar System. Somebody's got to pull a publicity
campaign that'll make the great dumb public sit up and think. If public
opinion's with you, you're safe."
He smiled. "I'm big news, sister. I'm Roy Campbell. I can splash your
lousy little mess of tin cans all over with glamour, so the great dumb
public won't let a hair of your little head be hurt. If you want to,
you can raise a statue to me in the Council hall.
"And now will you for God's sake go?"
* * * * *
She wasn't crying. Her gray eyes had lights in them. "You're wonderful,
Roy. I didn't realize how wonderful."
He was ashamed, then. "Nuts. In my racket you don't expect to get away
with it forever. Besides, I'm an old dog. I know my way around. I have
a little dough saved up. I won't be in for long."
"I hope not," she said. "Oh, Roy, it's so stupid! Why do Earthmen have
to change everything they lay their hands on?"
He looked at Tredrick, lying on the stones. His voice came slow and
sombre.
"They're building, Stella. When they're finished they'll have a big,
strong, prosperous world extending all across the planets, and the
people who belong to that world will be happy.
"But before you can build you have to grade and level, destroy the
things that get in your way. We're the things--the tree--stumps and the
rocks that grew one way and can't be changed.
"They're building, Stella. They're growing. You can't stop that. In the
end, it'll be a good thing, I suppose. But right now, for us...."
He broke off. He thrust her roughly inside and locked the
steel-sheathed door. "You've got to go now."
It was dark, and hot. The Kraylen child whimpered. He could feel Stella
close to him. He found her lips and kissed them.
He said, "So long, kid. And about that statue. You'd better wait till I
come back to pose for it."
His voice became a longing whisper. "_And I'll be back!_" he promised.
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