Starhaven

Chapter II

The three small ships came streaking across the dark backdrop of the skies. There was the vessel that Johnny Mantell had stolen on Mulciber, and there were the two squat little two-man Space Patrol ships that came whistling after him in eager pursuit. Across space they came, heading out of the Fifth Octant of the galaxy and into the darkness.

Mantell was not worrying too hard. The percentages lay with him—if he could somehow manage to keep ahead of his Patrol pursuers until he could reach Star-haven’s orbit.

The chase had gone on for nearly two days, now—a dazzling pursuit in and out of hyperwarp, ever since Mantell had gotten away in the stolen ship. The SP men had been struggling to match velocities with Mantell’s ship, clamp metamagnetjc grapples around him, and haul him off to the Penal Keep on Thannibar IX.

Sweat dribbled down the sides of his face as he sat locked at his controls, feeling the frustration that all spacemen do: the curious disorientation that results when you cruise along at three point five times the speed of light and still seem utterly stationary, hung in an unbreakable motionless stasis.

That was the way it seemed to him in hyperwarp, with nothing but the grayness all around, and the two snub-nosed SP ships in formation behind him. He clung grimly to his course. They said anyone at all could operate a hyperwarp spaceship if he knew how to drive a car, and Mantell was discovering that that was true. He had guided the ship across hundreds of light-years without difficulty, without catastrophe.

Suddenly, his screen panel lit. The green blossom of light told him that he had reached the destination for which he had set the course-computer two days before. He nodded in satisfaction and.jabbed down hard on the enameled red stud that wrenched him out of the grayness of hyperspace and back into the normal space-time continuum once again.

The ship’s mass-detector buzzed once, twice, and he knew that his two pursuers had detected his action and had themselves made the shift-over maneuver only seconds after he had. But Mantell hardly cared about them now. The long chase was just about over. His goal was in sight.

Ahead of him, the massive bulk of Starhaven seemed to take up the entire sky.

He saw it as a giant coin floating in the dark sea of space, a burnished fiery copper coin studded with rivets the size of whales. He saw it full face, head-on, seeming to float with agonizing slowness toward him.

Behind him lay Nestor, the red super-giant sun whose faint rays barely managed to illuminate Starhaven’s surface. Starhaven had no need of Nestor’s radiation, though. It was shelled over entirely with metal, and it was completely self-sufficient powerwise.

He locked his ship into an automatic orbit around the metal world. Consulting his mass-detectors, he saw that his pursuers were doing the same thing. But for the first time since he had started his wild flight, hundreds of light-years away on Mulciber, he felt calm and confident. He couldn’t be caught now. He had the same land of ship as his pursuers rode, and it was operating now at full ion-drive velocity. They couldn’t do any better than that. The gap between the ships would have to remain constant. All they could do was tag along behind him, staring at his red exhaust stream.

Mantell snapped on the communicator. After the first quick hum of contact the Space Patrol scramblers cut in, but Mantell speedily switched circuits on them, throwing his beam up into the Very High Frequencies where their scramblers could have no effect.

He said, “Come in, Starhaven. Come in!”

For half a minute, thirty ticking tense seconds, there was only silence. Swiveling in the pilot’s bucket-seat, Mantell peered through the rear visiscreens and saw the two snub-nosed Patrol ships hanging in there grimly, waiting for him to make some kind of mistake, waiting for him to falter.

“Come on in, Starhaven,” he said again.

A moment’s pause. Then:

“This is Starhaven. Identify.”

Mantell moistened his hps. His voice came out almost as a croak. “My name is Mantell, Johnny Mantell. I’m a fugitive from the Patrol. Two SP ships chased me down from Mulciber. They’re still on my tail. Can you give me sanctuary?”

“We see the SP ships,” came the calm reply. “But you’re in an SP ship yourself, Mantell. Where did you get it?”

“Stole it.” The ship went whipping around Starhaven for the fiftieth time since he had fixed it in its orbit, and behind came the hopeful pursuers. “I’m asking sanctuary. They want me on a murder rap.”

A fake murder rap, he thought. But he didn’t tell them that.

“Okay,” the Starhaven operator replied. Then he turned offmike for a second and muttered something inaudible to Mantell. Then he said, “Keep in your orbit, Mantell. We’ll handle your pals, and then pick you up.”

Mantell grinned in relief and joy. “Thanks. Be seeing you soon.”

“Yeah. Sure, Mantell.”

He broke off contact and turned to keep his eye on the rear visiscreens. Now that he knew he was home free, he could afford to have a little fun for a moment. He jabbed buttons, cutting velocity ten per cent, just enough to seem to give the Patrolmen behind him one last fighting chance.

They were wide awake. A double blast of energy immediately raked his screens, but his defenses held. He chuckled. Then there was a sudden burst of light from the metal-skinned planet just ahead.

He knew what that light was. It meant that the legendary heavy-cycle guns of Starhaven were coming into play. He watched as the first of his pursuers drew a blast of energy. The Patrolman’s ship shuddered as his defense screens labored to absorb the overload, the battery of energy guns below sent up an additional blast. The total megawattage must have been enough to sink a satellite. One moment the little Space Patrol ship was there; a second later, it wasn’t.

As for the other Patrolman, he didn’t seem minded to stay around and fight a one-man battle with the impregnable fortress that was Starhaven. He turned tail frantically and streaked for home at six’ gees.

The gunners below let him run for about six seconds, no more. Then a lazy spiral of energy came barrelling up from Starhaven to engulf the fleeing ship. Suddenly Mantell was alone in the sky.

Free. Safe.

He hung limply to his control rack, waiting for them to pick him up.

He didn’t have to wait long. His ship completed another circuit in its orbit round Starhaven, and this time he noticed a hatch opening in the bright metal skin, fifty thousand feet below him.

On his next time around a spaceship had come forth from the hatch and was rising rapidly. On completion of one more circular swing, the Starhaven ship had matched orbit with him and was following him along quite nicely.

Only this was no tiny Space Patrol ship. It was a monster of a spacefaring vessel, and it overhauled him with ridiculous ease. He lowered his screens and let the other ship’s metamagnetic grapples snare him without resistance; gently he was drawn “upward” into the belly of the big ship.

A hatch in the ship closed smoothly over him. His communicator crackled into life, and a heavy, deep voice said, “Stay right where you are, Mantell, and don’t try anything. We’ll come to get you out of your ship. Open your rear airlock.”

He nudged the control panel and the lock slid open. There was silence outside, and darkness. He became conscious of a faint hissing sound that grew rapidly stronger, and he smelled a sickly sort of sweetness in the atmosphere.

Gas, he thought. In momentary panic he reached for the airlock control, but he debated shutting the lock for a fraction of a second and in that fraction of a second the gas robbed him of all volitional control over his muscles and nerves.

He rose uncertainly, tottered and fell. Darkness came, then nothingness.

Mantell awoke, feeling a cottony taste in his mouth. He was no longer wearing his space suit. He was in a cabin in the other ship, surrounded by four solemn-looking men in civilian clothes. One of them was holding a blaster pointed in the general vicinity of Mantell’s midsection.

The one with the blaster said calmly, “Please don’t move, Mantell. You’re on your way to Starhaven now. Well be entering the shell any minute.”

Mantell shook his head, to help clear it of the effects of the gas. He felt soggy and angry. He said, “What’s the idea of all this guff? Why the gun? How come you gave me the gas? A fine reception you guys hand out to friendly visitors!”

The man with the gun said, “We like Starhaven the way it is. We intend to keep it that way. And every stranger who wants to come here is suspect until he is qualified for residence.”

“For all we know,” said one of the others, “this is some land of Space Patrol deal to slip a spy into Starhaven.”

“An SP deal that costs them two ships and four lives?” Mantell snapped hotly. “That doesn’t make sense. I’m—”

“You’re nobody, until you’ve been psycho-probed,” the man with the blaster said.

“Psychoprobed?”

“That’s standard processing for everyone who enters Starhaven for the first time. It’s a security measure.”

Mantell knew his face was going pale. Psychoprobing was no plaything for amateurs, even the usual psychologists. Its procedure was complex and took years to master. “How can you—I mean, do you have anyone here qualified to do the job? You can mess up a man’s mind but good if your technique is off even the slightest bit.”

The other grinned coolly. “Relax, Mantell. The head of our psychprobe is named Erik Harmon. Does that make you feel any better?”

Erik Harmon? Mantell blinked, digging back into old memories. Harmon, here? The famous scientist who had invented and then perfected principles and techniques of psychprobing, and who had mysteriously vanished from civilization nearly twenty years before?

“I guess he’ll do,” Mantell admitted wryly.

The ship glided to a feather-light landing. The steady whispering hum of the inertialess drive ceased abruptly and the landing stabilizers shot out on either side of the big ship. Mantell felt tense; a muscle throbbed in his cheek. He heard the hatch in Starhaven’s metal surface clang resoundingly shut far above him.

The man with the blaster grinned amiably and broke the dead silence by saying, “Welcome to Starhaven, Mantell. Your first stop will be a visit with the boss. Come along and let’s get your mind looked at.”