Postmarked the Stars

2. MEMORY LOST AND FOUND

“Two holds full seal, treasure half seal.” Rip’s voice rang hollowly over the inter-cabin com, loud enough for Dane to hear. Captain Jellico looked to him for confirmation, and he nodded.

“As I left them. Must check the treasure—” Once on full seal, the intruder could not have opened either of the lower compartments where the bulk of their cargo rested. But the treasure room, for registered and special security shipments—Since nothing had been found in Dane’s cabin with the dead stranger and it was apparent from the fact he had strapped down that he had intended to ride out the voyage and not use the elaborate disguise for an on-and-off invasion of the Queen, then if he did bring something on board, they had better find out what as quickly as possible.

“You’re in no shape—” began Tau, but Dane was already sitting up.

“We may be in no shape later if I don’t!” he returned grimly. Once before the Queen had carried an almost lethal cargo unwittingly, and that memory would ride with her crew for years. Wood taken on ship on Sargol had been infested with creatures able to assume the color of anything they touched, creatures whose claws carried a soporific that hit the crew like a plague.

Dane was sure an inspection of the treasure room would assure him whether or not there was any unaccounted-for cargo on board, since a cargo master by long training carried most of his inventory in his head, as well as on record tapes.

They had to let him do it. The safety of the Queen by necessity came above all else. But it was Tau who gave him a shoulder to lean on and the captain himself who went down ladder ahead of Dane, reaching up to support the younger man’s weak legs.

And Dane needed that support by the time they reached the level of the treasure room. He held fast to Tau for a long instant, his heart pounding, gasping. Now Tau’s words that he had been very close to death struck starkly, but he stumbled on, reaching for the release.

Trewsworld was a frontier planet, lightly settled. The bulk of the mail they carried for her single port city was light—micro tapes of agricultural information, personal communications between settlers and off- world, a bag of official tapes for the Patrol post. There was little enough security material, and the major portion was the embryo boxes.

Since the importation of domestic animals was experimental on most worlds and very carefully supervised, any such shipment was top security. And Ecology had firm rules on what might or might not be transferred. Too many times in the past, the balance of nature on some planet had been thoughtlessly overturned by such importation of a life form that had no local enemy, which perhaps developed a mutated strain beyond control, to speedily become a menace rather than the source of profit the importers had intended.

After exhaustive tests the pioneers were allowed imports of embryos for stock raising, and the Queen now carried fifty such—lathsmer chicks in sealed containers. These were lab-developed and worth far more than their weight in credits—since Trewsworld had proved an acceptable climate and lathsmer fowl were luxury items across a wide sector of space. Not only could the adults be plucked once a year for their fine

down, but young chicks were epicures’ delight for the table. If the lathsmer were raised in quantity, the pioneer settlers of the planet had an export item to establish them firmly in galactic trade.

To Dane these were the major “treasures” the Queen carried. But the boxes were secured by double bolting and shock packing, just as he had supervised. They were intact and protected. The few other bags and boxes were as undisturbed, and he finally had to admit that as far as he could tell, there had been no tampering. But when Tau helped him out, he double-sealed the portal as it should have been before the Queen lifted.

The original problem remained unsolved. A dead man in a mask, aboard for what reason? Until they came out of hyper, which meant into the Trewsworld system, there was no chance to communicate with the Patrol or other authorities.

Tau had made a detailed study of the body before it had been sealed off in a hull pocket for deep freeze. Save that the stranger had plainly died from a heart condition aggravated by the strain of take-off, that examination told them nothing. The man was of Terran descent with no mutating modifications. In these years of space travel he could have been any age past youth and from a number of worlds where the inhabitants were so akin to Terrans as to make them indistinguishable. None of the Queen’s crew had seen him before, nor was the poison used on Dane isolated and named by the medic, in spite of his research.

The forgery of the ident disk was perfect. Jellico stood now flipping that back and forth as if it alone could somehow prove a key to unlock the puzzle.

“Such a careful plan means a big deal. You say that call to pick up the security package came through the field tower?” he asked Dane.

“Regular channels. I had no reason to doubt it.”

“Probably was straight, as far as they knew. Anyone could have put it in to them,” Steen Wilcox, the astrogator, commented. “You’re sure there’s nothing on the manifests that is suspicious?”

“Nothing.” Dane suppressed a sigh. Of course he was only a stand-in for Van Ryke (and how he wished now that the usually omniscient cargo master was here and that he himself could return to the less responsible role of assistant), but at least he knew what he had seen stored away. He had personally clamped most of it into the special racks. The biggest things they had handled were the embryo boxes and the brach cage. The brach cage! That was the only thing he had not remembered, mainly because its inhabitants, being alive and needing attention, had been placed in Mura’s territory of the hydro compartment.

“What about the brachs?” he asked now.

Tau had a ready answer. “Nothing there. I give them daily inspections. The female’s about to have kits— not until after we planet—but she should be checked. That traveling cage can’t conceal anything.”

Dane thought about the brachs. They were common on Xecho—the largest native animal, that is, land animal.

But that did not make them very big. An adult male was about as tall as Dane’s knee, the female slightly larger. They were amusing, appealing creatures, covered with a soft growth that was really neither fur nor under-feathers but had some of the texture of both. This was cream-colored with a faint rosy underlight in the female, darker in the male, who was in addition equipped with folds of skin under his throat that could be inflated and, when so, flushed crimson. Their heads were long with pointed, narrow muzzles and a small, sharp horn on the very tip, which they put to excellent use when dealing with their favorite food, a shellfish that had to be pried open. The ears had feathery fringe. They were easily tamed but now rigidly protected by law on Xecho after early settlers there had carried on an illegal trade in their skins. Selected

pairs were sometimes exported only under bond to specialists in xenobiology, as these were due to be delivered to a lab on Trewsworld. For some reason they seemed to present a puzzle to most biologists, and several different planets had scientists devoting time to a detailed study of them.

“That’s it,” Dane said a short time later. He had run through the tape of inventory—nothing anywhere, except a dead man who must have been part of a very elaborate plan.

“So—” Wilcox looked as if he were now faced with one of his beloved mathematical formulas, one that was new and he was now admiring, before solving, for its very intricacy. “If this was not for the cargo, it is the man himself. He needed to get to Trewsworld under cover. Either the disguise was meant to operate to pass him at both ports or one alone. He risked our uncovering him and putting him under arrest. And murder, since they must have meant to eliminate you permanently”—he nodded to Dane—“is a very high price to pay. What’s going on on Trewsworld according to rumor?”

Planet politics could be a perilous business on some worlds, as they all knew. Free Traders carefully did not take sides. It was hammered into every crewman that the ship itself was his planet and to it he owed allegiance, first, last, and always. No involvement in local matters. That could be a hard fact to face when one’s sympathies or emotions were aroused by sights and sounds, but every one of them knew that it was the backbone of their own lives and it must be adhered to. So far, Dane had never come face to face with a choice between the ship’s safety and his own emotional urge to join or refrain. He knew that he had been lucky, and he only hoped that luck would continue to hold for him. He did not know whether any of the others had faced that dilemma, but the past, before he had joined the Queen, was theirs and not his to remember.

“Nothing off course that I know of.” Jellico still slapped the ident disk against the palm of his hand. “We’d have been warned in the general orders if there was. Combine had this run. They turned over all their general tapes with the contract.”

“There is always,” Ali said, “the I-S.”

I-S—Inter-Solar. Twice in the past the Solar Queen had had a brush with that company. And both times the Free Trader had won the round, a pygmy successfully facing down one of the giants of the star lanes. The companies with their huge trading empires, their fleets of ships, thousands, even millions of employees strung out along the galactic trade routes, were monopolists, sparring with each other for the control of new planet trade. The Free Traders were the beggars at the feast, snatching at such crumbs of profit as the big ones overlooked contemptuously, or thought it not worth the effort to exploit.

The Solar Queen had held a contract on Sargol for the taking of Koros gems—her captain had even fought a Salarik duel with an I-S man to claim and hold their rights. It was the I-S who had had the Queen proclaimed a plague ship when the mysterious pest they had unwittingly brought aboard with cargo had knocked out most of the crew. And only grit, determination, and an appeal made over the law, but effectively, to Terra at large, broadcast from a port by the junior members, who had not succumbed to the pest, had saved their ship and their lives.

And it had again been an I-S representative whose poaching trade they had broken on Khatka when Captain Jellico, Medic Tau, and Dane had visited there at the Chief Ranger’s request during what might have been a disastrous planet leave.

So the I-S people certainly had no love for the Queen, and her crew would be inclined to think first of their meddling in any trouble. Dane drew a deep breath. This could be I-S! They would have the means, the facilities to set up such a plan. There had not been any I-S ship planeting on Xecho while the Queen was there—it was Combine territory—but that meant nothing. They could have shipped in their man on a neutral shuttle from another system. But if this was part of an I-S plot— “Could be,” Jellico returned. “But I doubt it. In the first place, they may not look upon us with any warmth of feeling—or at least a warmth of feeling we would relish. But to them we are very small fry. If they saw a chance to fuse our tubes without difficulty, they’d probably do it. But to set up some elaborate plan—no. We’re carrying mail, and any trouble would bring a Patrol investigation. I won’t cut out I-S, but they are not my first choice. Combine reported no political trouble on Trewsworld, so what—”

“There is one way of learning something.” Tau drummed absently on the edge of a swing shelf with his fingertip, and Dane caught himself watching that. Craig Tau’s hobby was magic, or rather those unexplainable powers and talents that the primitive (and sometimes not so primitive) men on half a thousand worlds used to gain their ends. He had used his knowledge of such things to bring them safely out of danger on Khatka, and in that particular action a drum had had a great deal to do with the building up of whatever force he had drawn upon to break the will of a feared witch doctor. Only Dane had beat the drum then, to Tau’s orders.

Now it was almost as if some suggestion reached from the medic’s mind to his. Though Dane had no claim to esper talents, Tau had admitted that was in fact why he had made a good foil on Khatka.

“You can’t remember what happened between your leaving the ship and your awaking in the inn, consciously,” the medic continued. Dane lost interest in that drumming finger and guessed.

“Deep probe?”

“Will it work?” Jellico demanded.

“You can’t tell until you try. Dane has a block against some hypo techniques. How deep that goes, we can’t tell. But the dead man was wearing his tunic, which means they might have met. If he’s willing to try, deep probe might give us some answers.”

Dane wanted to shout “no” with all the force the illness had left in him. Deep probe was used on criminals by court order. If a man were susceptible enough, it would wring every incident of his life out of him back to the first childhood memories. But they would not be after that, just the immediate past. Dane could see the sense in Tau’s suggestion. It was just that to accept it meant facing up to something from which he shrank with every fiber of his being.

“We can set it only for the time you left the ship.” Tau appeared to understand the cause of his reservation. “And it may not work—you’re not a good subject—plus the fact we have no idea what alteration of body chemistry the poison may have worked. In one way, such a testing might be to your advantage, for then we can judge any change that dose may have caused.”

Dane felt a return of that same chill that had struck him when he had fought for strength in the inn. Did Tau believe that he had taken mental damage? But he had remembered the stowage, and the tapes had confirmed the accuracy of his memory. There was only the period of time that Tau wanted to research that eluded him. He wavered—the distaste for the probe’s revelations, together with a feeling he did not want to know if the drug had affected him, combined to make him hesitate. Only, if he did not agree, then in days to come his ignorance might be worse to face than certain knowledge.

“All right,” he said, and then, for a second or two, wished he had refused.

Since the ship was in hyper and needed only a standby watch on the bridge, Rip was set that duty, and both the Captain and Wilcox were present as Tau made ready to activate a probe. Dane was not quite certain how it worked, though that it was able to turn a man inside out as far as his past was concerned was a known fact.

Jellico made ready to tape what Dane would report, and Tau gave him the shot to send him under. He heard a dwindling murmur and then—

He was going down the ramp, a little worried and resentful of this last-minute call to pick up a security package. Luckily there was a field scooter parked not too far away. He scrambled in, fed in his ident disk, and gave it the order for the gate.

“The Deneb.” He repeated aloud his destination, having a vague idea it was an eating place not too far from the field. At least that much was in his favor. And he had the receipt tape to hand, needing only the voice and thumb record of the shipper to make it legal.

The scooter delivered him at the gate, and he looked down the offport street for some sign of the cafe he wanted. Xecho was a crosslane planet, a port of call for ships switching from one sector to another. Thus it did have an off-port section of inns, eating places, and amusement holes for space crews, but it was relatively small and tame compared to such sections ringing the ports of other worlds, consisting of a single street of closely packed one-story buildings.

As usual, the heat of late afternoon was intense. Dane was wearing full uniform tunic and breeches, which added to his discomfort. He must make this excursion as short as possible. He searched for any identifying sign of the establishment he wanted. Those bright lights that would be visible at night were missing now, and it took him several moments of survey to find it—a small place sandwiched in between a hock-lock and an inn he remembered having eaten in the day before.

There were not many on the street—the heat kept most planetside dwellers inside. He passed only two crewmen as he made the best speed the sultry day heat would allow to his goal, and he did not look closely at either.

To step inside the Deneb was to step from a furnace into cool dusk and relief against the punishment of Xecho’s day. It was not a restaurant, rather a drinking place, and he was uneasy. For someone with a package needing security insurance, to be waiting here was not normal—but then this was his first mail run, and how could he gauge what was normal procedure. If he got voice and thumb records, then the Queen was only responsible for the safe transportation of the article in question, and if he had continued doubts, he need only step into the security office at the port on his way back and make an additional recording for the complete coverage of the Queen’s part in an affair that might be on the shady side.

There was a line of booths against the far wall with dials for drinks and various legal smokes. But knowing off-ports, Dane wondered if some illegal stimulants could not also be ordered if one knew the proper code. The place was very quiet. A crewman was in a drunken doze in the farthest booth, an empty glass before him, his fingers still curled protectingly about it.

There was no sign of any proprietor, and the small booth beside the door was empty. Dane waited impatiently for a moment or two. Surely the drunk in the corner had not sent for him. At last he rapped on the surface of the pay-booth grill, the noise carrying more loudly through the room than he expected.

“Softly, softly—”

The words were Basic but delivered with a hissing intonation that slurred them into what was just a series of “s” sounds. The curtain at the back of the booth had been pulled aside, and a woman came in—that is, she was almost humanoid enough to be termed that, though her pallid skin was covered with minute scales, and the growth that hung about her shoulders was not strictly hair, fine-fringed though it was. Her features were enough like his own not to be remarkable. She was wearing an affectation of Terran sophistication that he had last seen on that planet, narrow trousers of metallic cloth, a sleeveless jerkin of puff fur, and a half mask of silver-copper that covered eyes and forehead and hung part way over the nose in whorls of metal.

The dress, high-style Terran, was as out of place in this dingy hole as a drink of Lithean champagne would be, although it served as a disguise.

“You wish—?” Again that hissing speech.

“A call was made to the mail ship, Gentle Fem, the Solar Queen, asking that a security package be picked up for shipment.”

“Your ident, Gentle Homo?”

Dane held it out, and she bent her head a little as if the elaborate mask made it as hard for her to see as it was for others to view her face.

“Ah. Yes, there is such a package.”

“You are the sender?”

“Please to come this way.” She evaded his question, opened the front of the booth as if it were a door, and beckoned Dane beyond, looping the curtain for him to pass through.

There was a very narrow corridor, so narrow a vent that his shoulders brushed the wall on either side. Then a second door, one set in the wall, rolled aside as he approached it, probably set on an entra beam.

The room into which he went was in contrast to the dinginess of the Deneb’s open serving section. It was paneled in plasta sheets, which melted into one another in a never-ending view of wide sweeps of alien landscapes. In spite of the beauty of the walls, however, there was an assault on Dane’s nostrils that almost made him gag. He could see no source of that terrible stench—it just was, though the furnishings of the room were luxurious and its general aspect one of taste with plenty of credits to gratify it.

A man sprawled in an easi-rest. He did not rise as Dane came in nor greet him with more than a stare. The woman paid no attention to him but swiftly went past Dane to the other side of the room and picked up a box of dull metal, a square cube as large as two palms’ width.

“This you take,” she said.

“Who signs?” Dane looked from her to the man, who still stared at him so steadily that the Terran felt uncomfortable.

The man said nothing at all, though there was a small period of silence as if the woman waited for some order or move from him. Then she spoke.

“If it is needful, then so will I do.”

“It is necessary.” Dane brought out his recorder and leveled the lens at the box.

“What you do?” the woman cried out with urgency as if he proposed to shoot the package out of her hand.

“Take an official recording,” he told her. She had the box pressed tightly between both hands, the fingers outstretched so that she appeared to be trying to cover as much of its surface with her own flesh and bone as she could.

“You ship that,” Dane continued, “and you must go by the rules.”

Again it was as if she waited for some sign from the man, but he had not moved, nor did his eyes drop from their survey of Dane. Finally, with visible reluctance, she put the box on the edge of a small table and stepped back, though she hovered close by, her hands even outstretched, as if ready to snatch it to safety if threatened.

Dane pressed the button, took a picture of the shipment, then held out the mike of the voice tape.

“Verify that you are shipping this by security, Gentle Fern. Give your name, the date, and then press your thumb on the tape roll—right here.”

“Very well. If this is the regulation, then I must do.” But she picked up the box and held it against her as she leaned forward to take the mike.

Only she did not complete that gesture. Instead, the hand reaching for the mike slashed down at Dane’s wrist, and a nail, abnormally long, scored his flesh. For a moment he was too stunned to move. Then his hand and his arm went numb. As it dropped to hang uselessly at his side, the tape fell on the floor. He had strength enough to turn to the door, but he did not get even one step toward safety. His last clear memory was of falling forward to his knees, his head turned a little so that the unwinking stare of the man in the easi-rest was still on him. The other did not move.

There was nothing more until he crawled over a steamy landscape over greasy mud and awakened again sick in the inn room to make his way back to the Queen.

Then he awoke, to face the party crowding into sick bay, Tau bending over him with a restorative prick of needle, bringing him fully aware of where he was, but this time able to remember all the probe had brought to the surface of his mind.