Fugitive of the Stars

CHAPTER VII

Weariness and black despair came over Horne. What's the use, he thought, I might as well have let them take me back there. I might as well go over the side and have done with it. Or else try and get away from Skereth, out to one of the fringe worlds. There are lots of places where a man can lose himself.

Lose himself is right. No, the devil with that kind of a life.

Ninety-seven crewmen and thirty-eight passengers, and a good ship, and they say I did it. They say I was a lousy drunken negligent murderous fool.

Horne clenched his fists and beat them gently against the gunwale. Every time he thought he had it fought down and under control it came back on him and the agony was just as great as ever.

He looked over the dark sea toward Rillah, where the last gleam of the cone's light was disappearing. It would pass on above the coast and the coastal range and the outer and inner valleys, heading out across the vast plain beyond them where the city stood at the junction of two rivers.

"I'll be damned if I'll let him get away with it,” he said aloud and fiercely. The face of Ardric came clearly into his mind, the nice clean-cut intelligent face that was perhaps just a little too thin in the mouth and too flinty in the eyes — only you'd never think of that until the bastard had stuck the knife right up to here in your back.

"If he is alive,” said Horne softly, “I'll make him sorry the day he didn't die in the wreck of the Vega Queen!"

He got out his chart and set a new course, far south of the one he had followed before. The flying cone was now out of sight entirely. He set the speed lever wide open and the skiff leaped over the black water, streaking bright fire behind it.

Night and day are long on Skereth, and the twilights in between are slow and lingering. It was still dark when Horne finally made his landfall on a deserted coast, hiding the skiff under a tumble of rock where the over-frowning cliffs had fallen on the narrow beach. Dawn saw him crossing the saddle of a mountain pass, walking with a dogged steadiness, his few supplies slung between his shoulders and his long lean body bent to the slope of the rise. When full morning came he had reached the foothills above the plain and stood looking out at a tawny emptiness apparently as vast as the sea he had left behind him.

He drank deeply at a spring, ate a few mouthfuls of his remaining food, slept for a time in a crevice of the rocks, and went on again. And the long, long day dragged on.

Noon. The invisible orange-yellow sun stained the clouds with streaks of gold and bloody crimsons and unexpected mauves. Heat filtered like a physical substance through the cloud-layers, filling the space between land and sky so that even the wind that blew, and blew and never stopped blowing across the flat plain could not cool it. The looped windings of a river seemed like molten brass running from some huge crucible, and the spiny trees beside it were the color of dun flame. Yellow grasses grew waist high, rippling under the furnace wind, and every so often the colors in the sky would darken to a sullen purple and everything that moved became still and waited.

It was just before the breaking of one of these storms that Horne saw the watchtower. It was obviously very old, a broken relic leftover from an earlier and ruder day. It had probably had no watcher in it since men took to the sky and the use of artificial eyes and ears. But Horne did not like it, even so. It made him feel helpless and exposed. On the rare occasions when he had sighted a cone — he had purposely chosen a route away from the regular flight lanes — he had been able to lie hidden in the long grass until the danger was past. But this tower was stationary and he was going to have to pass it, and there was no possibility of concealment.

The first gust of the storm, a blast that made the normal gale seem feeble, blew him to his hands and knees and then the slatey darkness clapped down and hid the tower and everything else under cloud and driving rain. The idea occurred to Horne to use the storm as cover. The wind was blowing his way. He let it take him.

And take him it did. It drove him staggering this way and that and the rain came in solid torrents like a waterfall and the lightning was amazing. He had never tried walking in a Skereth storm before and he found out very quickly why it was not a good idea. You lost all idea of direction and the thunder made you deaf and the lightning, blind and the rain drowned you standing up. He caught glimpses of the tower two or three times, outlined in a shaking glare, and then he didn't see anything any more until a deep gully opened suddenly right under his feet, choked to its banks with rushing water. He whirled around, dropping to all fours and clawing away to avoid being blown into the gully, and with incredible abruptness men appeared around him — he was not sure how many, two, three, four, staggering at him, reaching out to grab him.

There had been watchers in the tower, then. Even this far out from Rillah they were waiting for him. They had seen him from a distance and guessed that he might try to get past the tower in the storm. They were not going to let him.

Horne snarled like an animal and sprang at the nearest man.

They fell down on the sodden grass, under the pounding rain. Horne beat with his fists at the man's head. Hands caught him from behind and dragged him off. He turned, crouching, and fought them. They whirled clumsily in the wind and rain and then, all of a sudden, the lightning seemed inside Horne's head and he never heard any following thunder.

When he came to again he was in a stone room with a broken ceiling through which some rain found its way. A modern portable lamp burned brightly in a corner. He was lying on his back on a very dirty floor and four wet and muddy men were looking down at him.

Four men and a woman.

The woman was young, more of a girl than a woman, and she was not wet and muddy. She was dressed like the men, in a loose shirt of some silken material, shorts and sandals, but the shirt and shorts fitted her quite differently. She had long yellow hair and rather greenish eyes and her expression was far too somber for anyone that young and that good-looking.

"Are you awake now?” she asked him, in good Universal with a trace of the same accent Ardric had had. It made Horne bristle. He sat up, rubbing his head and glowering around. His stunner had been taken from him. One of the men was holding a gun-like weapon.

"Yes,” he said, “I'm awake."

He got to his feet, dizzy but too proud and angry to admit it.

"Who are you with?” he demanded. “The police, or Ardric? Or is it both?"

The girl said, “We are with Morivenn."

"Morivenn?” Horne was still dazed and did not immediately get it. Then he said, “But Morivenn died in the Vega Queen."

"I know,” the girl said. “I'm his daughter.

Horne stood still while the lightning blazed beyond the window slits and the thunder shook the stones.

Then he said quietly, “I'm sorry. And I suppose you'll have to kill me if you've made up your mind to it. But I was not responsible for that wreck."

He thought a glance passed between the four men. The girl's face remained set and uncommunicative.

She said, “There are men in Rillah who say you were."

"There are men in Vega Center who say so too. That doesn't make it so.” He paused. “What does Ardric say?"

"Ardric is dead."

"Are you sure of that?"

She did not answer that. “Tell me about the wreck."

He told her while the water dripped noisily down the stones and the men watched him with closed, hard faces.

"The course was altered after I set it. And a man doesn't lie in a drunken stupor on one glass of brandy. Somebody planned very carefully to destroy the ship and in order to do so I had to be gotten out of the way. This worked out just fine, because if there were any survivors I, or my memory, would take the blame and nobody would think to look for any other cause."

Horne added, his face taking on that dark iron look again, “He must have wanted awfully bad to kill your father."

"Ardric?"

"Who else? He was my co-pilot. Nobody else could have done it."

"But Ardric died in the wreck. Would he have killed himself, too?"

"Fanatics have been known to do just that. Only Ardric was no fanatic. He was a spaceman and a man of the world, the real hard world where two and two always make four. He didn't have to die in the wreck. All he had to do was get away in a lifeboat and keep out of sight. Go home, where he's among friends and can spit in the Federation's eye."

"We're not all his friends,” said the girl. “Sit down."

She motioned him to a block of stone that had fallen from somewhere above, and sat herself down on another one. The storm was slackening now, rolling away across the p am. [?missing text]of the men climbed up a winding stair that was part of the outer wall and still sound almost to the top. He disappeared overhead. The others remained where they were, between Horne and the door.

Horne looked at the girl. “Then he is alive,” he said.

"I think so. I'm not sure.” She leaned forward, searching his face with remarkably wise eyes, neither friend nor hostile, merely making an estimate of the sort of man he was, how far be might be trusted, how much he might be expected to understand.

"You are named Horne?"

"That's right."

"I am called Yso. These four are my friends, as they were friends of my father. Now, I think I believe your story of the wreck, Horne. And I think we can help each other…"

"Maybe,” said Horne, “and you look like a nice girl, though I can't say I'm wild about your friends. But I'm only interested in finding Ardric and choking the truth out of him. The politics of Skereth are your affair, not mine."

He stood up and looked at the man who was holding the gun.

The man shook his head. “Please don't try it,” he said. “We've gone to such great risk and trouble to intercept you that I would hate to be forced to burn your leg off."

Horne frowned, his head held slightly forward, his knees bent and tense.

"I mean just that,” said the man quietly.

"I think you do,” said Horne, shrugged, and sat down again. He looked with bleak resentment at the girl. “Do you get many recruits this way?"

"We have no time for politeness,” she said. “You don't understand how things are here. You think all you have to do is get into Rillah and find Ardric and choke the truth out of him. It's not that easy. If we hadn't found you and stopped you here, you'd have been dead long before sundown. You'd never have even reached the walls of Rillah."

"I knew they'd be waiting for me,” Horne said dourly. “A flier nearly caught me on the sea, and I was pretty sure it was the police headed for Rillah."

"The police,” said the man with the gun, “are the least of your worries. You say you're not interested in our politics, but you'd better get interested, because you're in them over your head."