Redline the Stars

7

Rael wrinkled her nose in distaste as she stepped through the Queen's hatch out onto the boarding ramp. Canuche of Halio was a highly industrialized world with a great deal of heavy manufacturing and chemical processing Every tame she came here, she found the stink of the atmosphere harder to take. Fortunately, it was only unpleasant and not actually detrimental to one's health, however much it offended her sensibilities. Also fortunately, she had never been forced to remain very long on-world. Teague had always just stopped off to pick up a few supplies and lifted off again as quickly as he could.

"Where do we go first?" she inquired of her companions She and the three apprentices had been given the day to take care of personal business and also to get a feel for the planet. Their officers would be expecting a report from each of them on various topics relating to their respective specialties when they returned that evening.

"The supply depot," Alt told her. "This is the first time since we took on that mail run that we've been near one, and we all have gear that needs replacing."

Dane fervently seconded that statement in his own mind. When he had joined the SoJar Queen, he had been fresh out of Training Pool, physically still somewhat a boy. Since then, he had added muscle, gaining breadth of shoulder and chest. At this point, all his clothing was stretched tightly over his body and would not have gone on him at all had it not been for Frank Mura's efforts with a needle.

He would be glad to be rid of the lot even though replacing everything would put a nasty hole in his already small store of credits.

A couple of hours later, the four left the Trade depot in good spirits. The men were wearing some of their purchases and carrying the rest. Only Rael was unburdened.

She had come on board well supplied, and she informed her companions that she was holding her spare credits for

the market.

"Let's drop off the loot," Shannon suggested, "and see about some real, honest-to-goodness food. — You're the expert, Rael, since none of the rest of us has been on Canuche before. Any suggestions? Someplace good in

Happy City maybe?"

"Not there," she declared flatly. "They've got marvelous restaurants in the northern section, right enough, but we wouldn't want to try paying for a meal in one of those.

"This is a working person's planet. Let's just take a transport to any of the factory areas, preferably near the big plants down by the waterfront. We'll find plenty of eateries around there, not fancy and the food's plain, but it's real, it's good, there's a lot of it, and it's reasonably priced."

"Lead on, good Doctor," Ali told her with an exaggerated flourish of his hand. "We can always escort the children through Happy City later on and show them something of Canuche's seamier side."

She frowned. "That's the locals' playground. We've got no guarantee that any of its delights are safe. Trade has blacklisted the gambling altogether. Space hounds have been made the mark too often in there."

"Do we look like total innocents?" Kamil demanded archly. "Besides, no one's suggesting that we venture there at night. Apart from the big restaurants, most of the place'll be shut down. It won't hurt to have a quick look around as long as we stick together." He said that last seriously. There were many areas in the galaxy where strangers were better advised not to wander alone, Canuche's pleasure districts, with Happy City at the top of the list, among them. At least, rumor had it that an occasional tramp spacer had gone there for a night's enjoyment and had not returned to ship or comrades again.

Dane soon tired of Happy City. It might sparkle with excitement at night when all its lights were ablaze and its streets and buildings were alive with people bent on finding their particular definition of fun, but now, as Ali had predicted, most of the area was closed tightly while the greater part of its denizens slept away the hours of Hallo's light. It looked dingy and tawdry and also a little sad, like a hope just beginning to fade.

Canuche permitted bawdry, gaming, and the sale for use outside the home of the many legal intoxicants, but strictly limited the areas in which such commerce could be conducted. The result was a series of pleasure districts, one for each of the provinces into which the big planet was divided.

There was no need to conceal the nature of Happy City's major industries, and no attempt was made to do so. Every block had one, and usually several, scarlet-fronted erotic houses with their posters of provocative symbols describing the company and substances to be found within. Interspersed among these were a bewildering number of drinking and smoking establishments, all featuring both live entertainment and gambling. Some offered facilities for dancing and food as well, the latter limited to light dishes geared to the desires of people whose main interest was in consuming products of another sort or to those wanting something to nibble while watching a show or taking a brief break from their exploration of the various haunts of the region. A few would also provide chambers where darker products could be purchased and used away from the prying eyes of the local police and the Stellar Patrol.

The remaining buildings housed straight dining places, the more pretentious of which called themselves restaurants. Those, too, were closed, and from the look of them, he was glad their guide had steered them to that eatery down by the waterfront. He doubted they would have found much of a spacer's definition of either quantity or quality in any of these.

That would not be true once they reached the northern section, of course, with its legitimate theaters and fine restaurants, but none of those were priced to attract the patronage of apprentices from small rim Free Traders.

Thorson shook his head. The existence of the facilities around them was hardly cause for amazement. Every spaceport of any significance provided similar services, all carefully supervised for the protection of reasonably cautious spacers. The concentration of them and the sheer size of the district was something else for one accustomed from his youth to the almost ascetic standards of the Pool. Gut level, he found this wholesale dedication to raw physical amusement a little disconcerting and more so the realization that Happy City was not unique in the universe. Many planets shared the same legal attitude toward the activities pursued here, and just about every one of them sported similar areas, all more or less notorious. Where excess was expected, and encouraged, it usually occurred.

All at once, his mind snapped back from the contemplation of the cultural phenomenon of the pleasure district to fix on their immediate surroundings. He stiffened as he did so. There were few locals on the streets, but his party was drawing an uncommon amount of interest from those who were about.

To be more precise, Rael Cofort was attracting it. The time they had spent living and working together on the SoJor Queen had bred a familiarity that had blunted his awareness of the Medic's beauty. Canucheans were not so

blinded, and to their way of thinking, there was but one reason why so pretty a woman should be wandering around a region like this.

The same held true for a particularly handsome man.

Ah, too, was receiving some close scrutiny.

Thorson could feel his temper rising and also his concern. Sure, the four of them could defend themselves against the single or couple of individuals they encountered, but those one or two had friends, doubtless within easy call. There was precious little anyone could do against a mob except hope to outrun it.

His fear eased in the next moment. It was inevitable that they should attract attention. The fact that they were obvious strangers would in itself ensure that they were noticed. Ali and Rael merely increased their conspicuousness. They were a singularly handsome pair by any standard that appreciated even marginally the Terran prototype, and in a place where beauty was routinely bartered, they had to expect close scrutiny.

There would be no trouble, not as long as they conducted themselves circumspectly, at least not at this hour, while Happy City was quiet and its patrons unfired by chemicals and the nighttime excitement of the place. They were, after all, off-worlders, not merely outsiders. They would not be expected to understand the nuances of appropriate behavior, much less to abide by them.

Space hounds were no more immune to that error than were their surplanetary kindred, he had to admit in all fairness. Almost to a one, they tended to regard the planet bound with precisely the same overblown, parochial tolerance. It was an odd prejudice when one considered it, and it applied almost exclusively to the various branches of humanity originating on Terra—races and species with other roots usually demanded more exacting compliance with local custom, with far heavier penalties for failure— but spacers, at least, had reason to be grateful that it existed. The attitude might in theory be a bit demeaning, but it did allow one to get on with the work at hand and conduct business effectively on planets with restrictive societies and moral or social codes strongly at variance with those ruling the starlanes.

Relaxing again, Dane turned his attention back to the silent, waiting city. They were passing one of the narrow alleys separating two outward-facing rows of buildings, and he paused a moment to study it.

The long, deeply shadowed passage was like any one of the countless others they had seen on their informal tour.

It was set exactly one step below the buildings lining it on both sides and was paved or tarred with a smooth, dark substance resistant to staining and capable of withstanding the heavy morning traffic engaged in the removal of garbage and other refuse and in the delivery of various supplies.

He noted again that each establishment seemed to possess the ability to close off its own share of the alley by means of high, retractable chain link fences, all of which were now drawn back in whole or part into their sheaths to allow the various service vehicles ready access to the entire passage. "Why the fences?" he wondered aloud. He could see no ready explanation for this apparently universal proprietary interest in these small, ugly patches of real estate.

Ali gave him one of his superior looks that still had the power to irritate the starlight out of Dane. "Well, my boy," he pontificated, "consider the number of people, many of them total strangers, frequenting these worthy palaces of entertainment. Quite, a few of those individuals would probably like to enjoy the delights of the house and then quietly depart with their store of wealth intact. The proprietors are doubtless unsympathetic to such initiative and most likely reason that a forest of high fences will render a quick dash out the back door ineffectual."

"Why all the chain, then?" Thorson inquired, refusing to let the other annoy him. "A solid metal barrier of this height'd be harder to scale, especially by someone who'd had a few."

"Spare us, Ali!" Rael pleaded, laughing. "A straight reply really will do just nicely."

The Engineer-apprentice started to scowl but then merely shrugged. "Actually, I don't know the answer to that one," he confessed.

"It's so the Canuchean police and the Patrol can see at a glance what's happening when they go by, which they do frequently and on an irregular schedule," she informed them. "That's why a minimum amount of lighting's required as well. Drunks still get rolled, I'm sure, and troublesome or slow-paying patrons worked over, but this does help to keep a reasonable hatch on such practices."

As she was speaking, Dane moved closer to the wall to study the mechanism of the fence. His companions started to join him, but Rael quickly stepped back again. "Space, what a stink!"

Ali cleared his throat. "With the volume of drinking and mixing of substances," he said delicately, "a certain effluvium is to be expected around the back door."

"All right, Ali," Rip Shannon interjected. "We get the picture."

Kamil grinned at his companion's squeamishness but followed the others readily as they hastened to move away from the shabby yard. He had not been aware of any particularly unpleasant smell until Cofort had mentioned it, but once she did, he caught it as well, a muskiness tinged with ammonia.

The four paused when they reached the front of the establishment, a drinking bar called the Red Garnet. It was open, not merely undergoing a cleaning and set-up for the night ahead but apparently inviting trade.

"How about having a look?" Dane surprised himself with the question. The whole pleasure district repulsed him, more strongly the longer he remained in it, but he was curious, too. Damn it, he wanted to see the inside of that place or of some other like it.

The Engineer-apprentice hesitated. They were at liberty, but he had a feeling that did not include permission to patronize anything in Happy City beyond a straight restaurant. "If we go in, we'll be expected to buy . . ."

"Not all of us," Rael cut in sharply.

Kamil's brows raised. "Give me time. Doctor. I was about to say that only two of us should order. The others won't. Does that meet your approval?"

She nodded curtly. "Aye. It's probably unnecessary, but . . ."

"Precisely, Doctor. Where Trade blacklists part of an operation, let the wise space hound beware the rest. —

Now that we've settled on our strategy, we need only choose our two drinkers. I'll pass. Thorson's one since this excursion is his idea. What about you to keep him company, Cofort?"

"No thank you," the Medic responded coolly.

"You don't drink. Doctor?" he asked smoothly.

"Not in dives like this!"

"Shannon, then, since you don't feel adventurous."

Ali smiled to himself, pleased to have been able to penetrate Cofort's armor sufficiently to get a rise out of her. No one appreciated a person's right to create defenses more than he did, or the right to keep quiet about the reasons for doing so, but Rael Cofort's were so good that finding a few chinks in them was a sort of a relief, as if it confirmed her basic humanity.

Dane felt sorry he had suggested coming inside as soon as he stepped through the door. The Red Garnet was just another bar where people came to do serious drinking. It was not particularly attractive, and it presented no features of special interest. Even the bustle of life and talk that would enliven the single big room later were absent now.

The set-up process was well under way, and tables were being maneuvered back into place on the freshly scrubbed floor by a half-dozen burly men. The chairs were still stacked along the walls one atop the other in groups of six.

At that point, the bartender looked up from arranging his glasses and spotted the Free Traders. "We're open, space hounds. What'll it be?"

"A couple of beers for the children, here," Ali responded lightly, seeing the man's close-set eyes begin to narrow at their apparent hesitation, "then we'll really have to stop playing and get back to the ship, or we'll be spending the rest of our time on-world scrubbing tubes."

That last had been addressed to his two male comrades.

Rip recognized his move to ease potential tension and answered him appropriately, then he and Thorson stepped up to the bar to confirm the order.

They were served quickly. Shannon sipped the golden liquid. "This is good," he averred.

The Canuchean made a sarcastic bow to acknowledge the surprised compliment. "A local brew," he informed them. "We export a lot of it. You might mention the fact to some of your pals around the spaceport. We'd all like to see a few more off-world faces in Happy City."

He collected their credits and went back to his previous occupation with the glasses, but the spacers could see that he did not take his small, sharp eyes off them.

Neither did any of the roustabouts, or whatever their real occupation might be. "If this were an adventure tape," Rip whispered to the Cargo-apprentice, "we'd all be shanghaied before this scene was played out."

"I know," Dane responded glumly. "This wasn't one of my better ideas."

Shanghaied. The term had come with Terrans into space and was recognized throughout the starlanes although it was so old that its origin had long since been forgotten, except possibly by Van Rycke. The Cargo-Master was a I storehouse of odd lore. That might not be so far from their hosts' minds, either, he thought darkly, even if they did not quite dare to act on it. Both Cofort and Kamil were coming in for more of the same kind of study they had received on the street but far more openly and more intently. No legitimate erotic house would touch such captives with a long-range tractor, but doubtless there were a number of less scrupulous operations in the district. Maybe the wide staircase to his right led not only to the gambling rooms but to an unlicensed facility of that nature as well.

If so, and the on-worlders moved successfully, he and Rip would wind up on the bottom of the bay . . .

He glanced at Kamil. If the black-haired apprentice was worried, he gave no sign of it. Thorson did his best to imitate the engineer's air of ease. He knew he was probably just building trouble out of nothing but his nerves, but it would be best not to reveal any unease or weakness. That in itself could provoke an incident. They were outnumbered, and it might not be easy to fight their way out of here.

Rael Cofort remained standing close beside Ali. She had quickly lost interest in the scene at the bar. She did not like the Red Garnet and wanted nothing better in that moment than to get out of the big room as quickly as possible. —

Would those two never swallow their beers?

Her hand closed convulsively around her throat. She felt as if she were choking.

Her medical training kicked in when she felt the race of her pulse through the arteries. Spirit of Space, what was .

wrong? Her body, driven by some subconscious warning, was terrified. What was triggering this panic?

She fought to master herself but could not drive off the horrible eagerness filling her, a hunger, as if the room itself were a great maw seeking to devour them all.

Her left hand gripped her companion's arm. "Ali, let's get out of here. Now. Please!"

Cofort's nerve broke with that, and she bolted for the door.

Her flight galvanized the Canucheans. They straightened and began to move in on the off-worlders.

Thorson instinctively drew closer to his remaining comrades and braced himself. Two to one. Bad odds in themselves, and a couple of their opponents had drawn knives, long, thin assassin's blades that could readily slip between a victim's ribs or thrust into his back to sever the spinal cord. All three Traders were unarmed . . .

Not quite, he saw suddenly. Kamil had unhooked a length of chain from his belt. Attached to one end of it was a broad double ring padded to provide a secure grip and act as a shield for the wielder's own hand. The other ended in three wickedly curved claws.

Ali smiled coldly as he swung the chain before him with practiced ease. The on-worlders gave ground. That devilish weapon was as readily recognized in the back alleys of the ultrasystem as were their own knives, and it was a light year more feared.

Dane swallowed hard. The Engineer-apprentice had survived the Crater War and its aftermath. He never discussed those dark years, but he had just shown them one of the means by which he had managed to do it.

With Kamil acting as rear guard, the off-worlders quickly made their retreat to the street and fell back in the direction from which they had come until they reached the alley once more. Rael Cofort was waiting for them there, and the three glared furiously at her.

"Hold up," Ali ordered. "They won't follow us now that we're on the street."

"What's to stop them?" Shannon inquired in a tight whisper.

"They'll stay put," he assured him. "As it stands, it's our word against theirs. They never verbally threatened us, and both sides pulled equally illegal weapons. To cap it off, there's a Canuchean police station halfway up the block.

We raise a ruckus, and the law will swarm all over the lot of us."

"They could call ahead, arrange to have us back-alleyed someplace."

"Precisely why we don't want them to see which way we went. They'll never imagine we'd be so stupid as to linger around then- own back door." He believed and fervently hoped.

As he spoke, Kamil casually, or seemingly casually, rehooked the deadly chain to his belt. Dane shivered in his heart. The older apprentice had worn the thing so naturally that neither of his shipmates had even noticed it, though he supposed any of the senior officers probably would have done so and confiscated it. Traders, Free or Company, went armed only in situations of open peril and only at the command of their officers, and Canuche of Halio was supposed to be a highly respectable planet.

He turned his attention to other matters, to one specific matter. His eyes fixed on the Medic.

Ali beat his comrades to challenging her. "What in all the hells did you think you were doing?" he demanded.

"Do you know what you caused in there?"

"I'm sorry," she said in a voice so low as to be scarcely audible.

"That doesn't quite pull it," he told her bluntly.

Cofort's mouth tightened. He was entitled to an explanation. All three of them were. "Something was really wrong in there. I don't know what the danger was or how immediate it was to us, but it was all around us." Her eyes closed.

"By all I revere, it was there . . ."

Dane spat out Van Rycke's favorite expletive, but the Engineer-apprentice silenced him with a sharp wave of his hand. Kamil gave the woman a strange look. "If you'd told me that, Doctor," he said, "I'd have lit my burners and gotten us out a lot sooner with a lot less trouble."

Rip looked at him in surprise but kept out of the discussion. Whatever had sparked Cofort's flight, she had not lied about her fear. That was still with her, or some part of it was. She appeared normal at first glance, but the pupils of her eyes were fully dilated, huge and round like those of a cat in mortal terror. Almost despite himself, he felt sorry for her.

He looked about the alley for some distraction to draw his shipmates' attention away from her for a few moments.

"They actually do take pains to wash the place down occasionally," he ventured in the end since he could find nothing better to say. "At least, that step nearest us and part of the surface around it have been scrubbed."

The Medic's hand flew to her mouth. "Spirit of Space!" she whispered. "Sweet.Spirit ruling space!"

The others stared at her as if she had suddenly started a conversation with the Whisperers.

"What's the matter now?" Thorson demanded testily.

Something definitely was. Rael's eyes, already too large, looked enormous, and her face had drained completely of color.

"No one washes a step and three feet to one side of it. You do the whole thing, or you don't start the job at all."

She was trembling slightly, but she made herself peer even more closely at the place where her eyes were already riveted.

Something white seemed to be jammed into the crack where the single step met the pavement. "Look! They must've missed that." Her back straightened. "We'll need it if I'm in the right starlane."

Dane's eyes narrowed. Despite her terror of a moment before and her distaste for the place, Cofort obviously intended to fetch the little scrap. "Stay put. I'll get it." He felt like a damned fool trying to play the hero out of some ridiculous adventure tape, but Rael had been scared and probably still was, even if she was hiding it now. It would not be right to force her to go in there when he had no qualms at all about doing so.

Her fingers closed on his arm with vise-tight urgency.

"Dane, no! We're not even armed!"

She forced the panic out of her voice. "I'm probably just being Whisperers' bait, but it's my idea . . ."

"What's going on here?"

The four spacers whirled about. Absorbed as they had

been, they had failed to notice the nearly silent approach of the flier now parked on the walkway behind them. Two men wearing the black and silver of the Stellar Patrol were standing beside it.

"The Patrol!" Rael exclaimed in patent relief. "Praise whatever gods rule Canuche! I'd rather have you lads take this than the locals. There's no knowing how they stand with the owners of this place."

The pair were unimpressed. "Just what are you four doing back here?" the agent who had challenged them, a Sergeant, demanded even more sharply.

"I believe that white object over there's a pretty damning piece of evidence. We were going to collect it and bring it to you people before it disappeared. It'll be gone for sure by this time tomorrow, if not a whole lot sooner."

"Right," he said unsympathetically. "How about telling us what sort of crime it's supposed to betray?"

"Murder. Brutal, particularly horrible, multiple murder."