The Star Virus

VII

Stundaker spaceground was a lusty, brawling, untidy sprawl which Rodrone took in with half his attention. He was used to such sights, and now his mind brooded elsewhere.

His black cloak flowing behind him in the hot breeze, he fitted well with the boisterous wastrels and adventurers who swarmed over the rigidified concrete. He moved easily among stalls, quarreling merchants, and the variegated forms of spaceships that were scattered about, not yet ready to take off—and so regarded as fixtures by the ever-shifting populace of the ten-mile ground. In his thoughts, he recounted his interview of a few minutes ago at the Council Chambers of the Merchant’s Guild.

The Stond’s departure from Kelever had left Rodrone with a simple problem: what now? It was still his ambition to gain total knowledge and control over the lens, but at first he was at a loss for ideas. On the one hand, he felt that Streall knowledge was necessary; on the other, the Streall were the people he must at all cost avoid.

In the end he had decided to put in at Stundaker. Atomic scientists of repute were known to live there, and in addition there had been tentative Streall contacts in the past, so perhaps he could gain a lead. Also, the planet was not tightly controlled. It remained a frontier planet, and was largely decentralized—a salient factor where a freebooter’s safety was concerned. Believing he had long ago shaken off pursuit, Rodrone had deemed it no risk to land.

In that, he was mistaken. Others besides himself had been undertaking research in the past few months. No sooner had the Stond’s engines cooled than he had received a summary order to appear at the elegant building on the edge of the ’ground. The building was an office of the House of Drone, which held sway over the local cluster. Though Rodrone, in common with most space-adventurers, had little respect for the Merchant Guilds which were constantly trying to constitute themselves into a form of interstellar government, he had imagined that their powers of action on Stundaker were probably limited and had decided to appear.

He had been surprised to find that he was not dealing with Drone alone. Representatives from the houses of Jal-Dee and Kormu were also present. They presented a richly-bedecked, self-satisfied crew to Rodrone, but he was keenly aware that their apparent smugness veiled a well-informed appreciation of the real nature of the doings of the free traders and hired captains who sustained man’s presence in the center of the galaxy.

He had taken one look at their costly furs, their apparel whose tailoring would have taken a lifetime’s wages from one of their bondsmen, and above all at their gross forms and money-dominated faces, and then had simply waited to hear what they had to say.

Jal-Dee’s spokesman began without preamble. “We believe that there has come into your possession a certain… article, named, by our information, the lens.”

Rodrone scanned their faces. “I have an article fitting that description,” he admitted.

The spokesman grunted in satisfaction. “Glad there’s no argument about that, then. The lens belongs to the Streall. They’re demanding it back. I’m afraid you’ll have to hand it over.”

Rodrone laughed shortly. He felt no fear of the Guild. He was a freeman, accustomed to behave as he pleased. “The whole damned lot of you collected to tell me that? Oh no. The lens is mine.”

Jal-Dee’s man sighed heavily and unpleasantly. Another merchant spoke up.

“The Streall’s claims are of long standing,” he said in a reedy voice. “Don’t think that we will risk antagonizing an alien race—a powerful and potentially friendly race, I might say—because of the personal greed of a… man like yourself.”

“What claim do the Streall have on the lens?” Rodrone asked them. “They merely say that they own it. But the lens is very old. It might have been made by a race now extinct. At any rate it’s mine and I’m keeping it.”

He stood, thinking to leave. “As to the friendliness of the Streall, I’ve had some experience of them. Going by their past actions, I’m astonished to hear you call them friendly.”

The man from Jal-Dee snorted impatiently. “I know they’ve taken over systems, but they were ruled by inferior races for the most part, not by humans. In any case we have received their guarantee that they have no further stellar ambitions in the Hub. In the face of this, we must recognize their claim to the lens.”

Rodrone wanted to laugh even louder at this, but an icy sense restrained him. As a student of history, certain patterns had meaning to him. But when he tried to explain where he had heard a similar phrase to the Streall’s, none of the merchants had ever heard of Hitler.

Unlike them, Rodrone was not reassured by the Streall’s philosophical, placatory moves. To the Streall humans also were an inferior race whose disorderly conduct was regarded as one would regard the playfulness of unruly pets or vermin. Rodrone did not think that the Streall’s actions were without a pattern.

“You fools, you think you can negotiate with the Streall,” he told the merchants. “You’re afraid of them; you want to appease them. Yet we could be a match for them if we put our minds to it. For that matter, why do you think they want the lens?”

He paused to let that sink in. “The lens has strange properties, gentlemen.”

The Jal-Dee spokesman became visibly uncomfortable. He placed an open file before him on the table. “Well, let’s see now, what we know about you. Name: Rodrone Chang. A lot of very disturbing reports of piracy. Oh yes, we know all about that private fleet of yours, armed to the teeth. Chang, we won’t be lectured to by a man like you!”

“There was no piracy!” Rodrone expostulated angrily, and untruthfully. “We simply overhauled cargo ships and forced them to sell at a reasonable price. Would you have us starve?”

“Never mind.” He waved his hand in annoyance. “This is an order: hand over the lens, and all is well.”

“The lens is mine,” Rodrone repeated. “It cost me a lot of effort to come by it, and I have uses for it. You have no jurisdiction over me, and that’s an end to it.”

He realized as he said it that the last statement was unwise. But he would not back out now. He pulled on his gloves, and tossed aside his cloak to reveal his handgun meaningfully.

As he turned to go, the Kormu representative, who up to now had not spoken, turned red. “It was an order, you scum! We know who we’re dealing with: a waster, a no-good, a goddamned pirate and a fuzzy-brain!”

This time Rodrone flushed at the ambiguous term, but made no answer. He left the building in a hurry, still defying the blunt command and realizing that he would have to leave Stundaker immediately.

He was honest enough to admit that the contempt had stung, even though it was no different from what he had expected. They had classified him, no doubt, according to their own values, and their estimate could hardly be favorable: a brooding, uncertain man, with a doubtful past and doubtful emotions. Not a man to be trusted, not a man to whose word one attached much importance. It would have been no use trying to persuade them that a basic seriousness underlay his errant nature.

Besides, he thought as little of them as they did of him. In this kind of culture, the only one humanly possible in the Hub, the sediment separated out, but the sediment carried all the weight.

He felt more free on the spaceground. Most spacemen shared varying degrees of disgust for the overfed detritus that had sunk to the bottom of economic activity, taking untold wealth with it. He could expect sympathy and, if there was trouble, help here. He had to get away quickly; there was no knowing how long it would take the House of Jal-Dee—clearly the strongest voice in the current council—to act.

And above, the stars shone down in brilliant daylight, providing the reason for it all: the Hub. The dazzling, star-packed plethora of worlds where anything could happen. Stundaker’s primary blazed down on the spaceground, slightly blue in color, and with it a scattering of extra-hard points glittered: nearby suns of the local cluster, many of them only light-weeks away.

He relaxed, enjoying the bustle around him. Hard-eyed men busied themselves with a multitude of tasks. Here, a bargain was struck, there, a fight was in progress. Further off, a woman in billowing skirts sat by a pile of luggage. About sixty percent of the men wore side arms, not because violence was particularly prevalent, but because it added a flamboyance which was in style. There were literally thousands of ships on the ground, of every size, range and mode of propulsion, and seemingly of every age. It required a second look to realize that some of those outlandish lumps of metal actually were ships. Rodrone walked by a stubby, streamlined shape that rested on a quartet of vanes each about three times the vessel’s breadth and nearly its height. Bowsers were busy pumping some fluid into it, and he imagined it was taking aboard water as propellant for an old-fashioned nuclear engine. Interplanetary traffic, most likely. Then he caught a whiff of alcohol. By space, a chemical rocket! He smiled, amused but not really surprised.

He skirted around the bowsers and started walking towards his own ship, the Stond, whose battered hull reared up a quarter of a mile away.

Then he stopped. Long, low armored vehicles were parked near the Stond, and even from here he could make out the insignia of the House of Jal-Dee. Men, armed and uniformed, stood guard at the portal ramps. They looked as if they were there to stay.

Casually Rodrone stepped back, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, until he was hidden by the bowsers again. He trembled with a sudden, sick fury. They were after the lens.

But the lens was not aboard the Stond. For safety’s sake he had removed it the minute they landed to a hotel in the town that surrounded the spaceground on all sides.

As he stood there he heard the sound of an approaching motor. One of the police cars swept by, containing members of his crew who struggled angrily with green-uniformed thugs. The driver, taking no notice of the scrimmage in the back of the vehicle, surged across the field at top speed, scattering bystanders and overturning a flimsy stall selling cold drinks.

The muffled, outraged shouts of Rodrone’s men faded into the distance. Rodrone pulled his cloak around him and glowered.

“What’s up, you been impounded?”

A mechanic had stepped out of the nearest bowser and was checking the meters. He glanced at Rodrone over his shoulder and gave a half-chuckle, half-grunt.

“Well, maybe this old crate won’t go far or fast, but at least it’s a ship. They might need an extra man.”

Rodrone walked away without answering. The mechanic had immediately sized up his situation, but a glorified firework wouldn’t take him far enough from Stundaker.

He made his way cautiously to the edge of the ’ground, and then threaded his way through the surrounding town. Any spaceground made for a fast-moving community; most of the buildings of the town were semipermanent structures made of plastic board, gaudy and in bad taste. Rodrone’s hotel was typical: a five-story edifice deriving its structural strength from an external scaffolding. Inside, however, it was fairly pleasant.

He took a lift to the fourth floor and let himself into the suite he had rented. Clave looked around as he entered.

“How’s things?”

“Bad.” Rodrone told him what had happened.

Clave showed no sign of surprise or alarm, though he probably felt it. He made a gesture, crossing the room. “I’ve been looking at this thing while you were out. It’s great.”

Rodrone joined him and looked down at the lens, experiencing for the thousandth time the familiar fascination of it. Not for one second since he first set eyes on it had that fascination completely left him. Nor had he grown tired of the scenes and dramas of endless variety, both within and beyond the reach of his imagination, that sprang to life and played themselves out in its limpid outer parts. Not one of them was even mediocre or nondescript, and each had a clearly defined beginning and an end—except, that was, for the one that he had now come to look on as his own private personal serial: the mad monk and his rabble in their assault on the beautiful city.

He had definitely discounted the idea that it was merely an alien version of a fictional picture show. The playlets seemed too authentic for that, fantastic though they were. He was convinced that they represented actual events.

Hypnotically his gaze focused on the glowing swirl in the center, the swirl that was a homologue of a past age of the galaxy, atom for star. He basked in the feeling that came over him when he thought of the innumerable suns hissing in the Hub, that condensation from which the spirals radiated, pouring electromagnetic energy into space. There was a significance in it he could not put his finger on, something unvocalized, ungraspable, something that would explain the whole sweep of history.

Could it be, he thought, that the final understanding of history was to be found in atomics? The science of inciting atoms was very ancient, beginning with the utilization of electricity well over a thousand years ago. Even now, electronics was the basis of nearly all control systems, but in addition other atomic particles, and whole atoms, were induced to agitate, to migrate, to change places instantaneously, to give up scores of different kinds of energies and effects. Rodrone doubted if the engineer or physicist lived who knew everything that was being done with atomic science, for there were no such things as universities these days.

If Rodrone was right, the lens contained the ultimate use of the atomic world, implying absolute knowledge. It was no wonder that the Streall wanted it. But Rodrone wanted it for himself, to be the one to know the meaning of events. All he needed was the key; but that was becoming increasingly difficult to find.

Clave jerked him out of his revery. “What makes those Guild creeps so keen on making a present of this gadget?”

“Appeasement. Most people don’t realize how the Streall regard us, Clave. We’re something on the level of vermin, or perhaps domestic animals. The merchants do know this, but it suits them. They’re rich, so why should they worry? The result is, they don’t want trouble.”

He glanced at the slanting sunlight. “We’ve got to get away from here. As soon as it’s dark I’ll go back to the ’ground and try to get us passage on a ship. You’d better stay here.”

“What about the rest of the gang?”

“We can’t do anything for them without losing the lens. They won’t be harmed. Jal-Dee will have to let them go eventually and they can take the Stond back to the squadron.”

He paced the room, stroking his beard, and sank into himself. For a few moments he gazed at himself in a mirror, intrigued as usual by his own soft, mournful brown eyes and the perennial question: an unusually strong man, or an unusually weak one?

They did not talk much for the rest of the afternoon. Rodrone spent most of it seated on a stool, watching the pictures in the lens. When it became night, he went out.

Activity on the spaceground underwent no abatement at night, but there were plenty of shadows and if anything it was even more crowded. Rodrone did not think he would have to worry much about being arrested unless he was careless; the local police would not dare to throw too much weight around in the presence of freemen from all over the Hub.

Of the first ten captains he approached, seven were not going his way and the other three laughed at him when he mentioned an item of luggage that had to be loaded in secret. News had got around.

The eleventh captain was more promising. To begin with, he was not particularly sober. Rodrone judged him to be approaching sixty years of age, but he seemed to have stopped maturing mentally about fifty of those years ago, and as a child he must have been uncontrollable. Rodrone had met men of his type before and he got on well with them. His face was cragged and seamed, surmounted by unkempt tufts of graying hair. He wore no uniform, but the individual dress of a free trader.

Cordially he invited Rodrone up to his quarters and poured him out a glass of pale blue foment. “Name’s Shone,” he said. “Gael Shone. This ship’s called the Stator. A fine ship—got her just recently, damned cheap too.” Draining his glass, he offered Rodrone more foment, then poured himself another. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m heading for the Skelter Cluster. I want passage for myself, a friend, and a small cargo. We’ll pay well, if you’re leaving soon.”

“Dammit, we’re leaving tonight, but Skelter’s a bit out of our way. We’ve got a cargo for Tithe.”

Rodrone rose to leave, nodding in disappointment. “I see. Well, sorry to have bothered you.”

“Hey, wait a minute.” Shone waved him back to his seat. “What’s doing in Skelter? Anything I can cash in on? There’s no hurry with our delivery and we’ve got no more work.”

“Nothing special, but we can manage.”

“Yes? What’s the cargo, anyhow?”

Rodrone became tight-lipped. “That’s a secret.”

Shone cackled in delight. “I thought so!” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Trouble with the Guild, eh?”

Rodrone took a chance. He nodded.

“Good,” the captain said in satisfaction. “I hate those swine. They took your ship apart by the beams, incidentally.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yup. Well they did. Whatever they wanted, they wanted it bad.”

“It’s no use to anybody but me.”

Shone studied him. “Well, I can believe that. Skelter’s quite a few degrees off course for us, Mister, but we’ll detour for a mere fifty thousand credits.”

Rodrone lost his breath at the exorbitant fee. The decision was out of his hands, however. “I’ll pay at the other end,” he said. “You can’t expect me to carry that money in my pocket.”

“I’ll trust you.” Gael Shone stood up. “Welcome aboard, then. You’ll like it here; my crew are good lads, some of them have been with me for years. Now, if we’re to get off Stundaker in one piece we’ll have to move fast. Jermy will go with you in our runabout and you can collect this thing of yours together with your mate. Then we’ll be off.” He lowered his voice warningly. “I’ve heard the Guild are asking the ’ground owners for a ship-to-ship search.”

Jermy, a small dark dapper man who was also rat-faced, met them at ground level by the cargo portal—situated where the drive unit was in most ships. Shone waved them goodbye as they drove off in the runabout, and then disappeared inside.

Although there had not been time for Shone to say more than a few cursory words to Jermy, he nevertheless seemed to be imbued with the urgency of the situation. Rodrone guessed that such was his usual mode of operation. He leaned tensely forward over the steering bar, darting through the semidarkness and too intent to say a word.

It was not until they burst in on Clave that the spacer spoke. Clave lifted his lank form off the couch where it had been draped, took a look at Rodrone and a more absorbed one at Jermy.

“Okay,” Jermy rasped, his eyes darting about like a rodent’s. “Is that it? Throw a blanket over it and let’s get it out.”

It was Rodrone and Clave who carried the lens, handling it carefully while being herded and snapped at by Jermy all the time. Rodrone felt glad at his efficiency—he had been well-trained as a criminal somewhere—as they bore the clumsy blanket-draped object through the brightly lighter foyer and on to the street. Soon they were hurtling back to the ’ground, Rodrone anxious for the safety of the lens which was bouncing dangerously in the back.

They arrived at the spaceground to find that a situation had developed that must have been in the making all the afternoon. The police had begun the search, and a group of three ships was resisting. Enfiladed by police cars, the ships were answering an attack by rifles and handguns with similar fire. Rodrone noticed a heavy-weapons blister halfway up one of the ships. It wouldn’t be long, he thought, before the spacemen became angry enough to resort to that.

The whole spaceground was in an uproar. Some of the ships were warming up to lift off if the trouble spread, and the sound of engines was deafening.

“What the hell—”

Jermy swerved to avoid a bunch of excited crewmen who were slapping their hip holsters and handing out energy charges. The runabout drove through a blast of hot gases from the pre-takeoff vent of an interplanetary freighter, and then they were in sight of the Stator. Jermy accelerated over the final stretch, nearly crushing them with his sudden stop at the cargo portal.

“Get it aboard,” he ordered briefly.

“Look at that!” Clave said suddenly.

The three besieged ships were lifting, a magnesium-bright haze at the stern of each. They were using the maximum-force propulsion system—maximum force, minimum deadweight, was how engineers described it—and it took from half an hour to an hour to ready the system for use. The battle must have been going on for at least that long, even though few had been aware of it.

A uniformed figure strode up and spoke to Jermy through the open window. “Everybody out of this car,” he said, “this is a search.”

Jermy took a small handgun from an alcove in the dashboard and with complete unconcern shot him.

“Now get a move on,” he snapped to the two men in the back. He opened the car door, kicking aside the body.

As they were transferring the lens from the runabout, an amplified voice rang out.

“SHIP SEARCH, SHIP SEARCH. LOWER YOUR PORTALS AND PRESENT FOR SEARCH. LOWER YOUR PORTALS AND—HEY, YOU THERE!”

“Hurry it up!” Jermy snarled impatiently, his voice clipped. He still did not offer to help with the awkward burden, but slammed shut the door of the runabout. “Now we shall have to leave the car behind,” he said in exasperation.

The police voice continued, offstage as though the speaker had turned his head away from the microphone. Rodrone did not allow himself time to see where the voice was coming from.

“Lieutenant, I think I’ve found it! They’re taking something aboard that big bus over there.” Then there was a gasp. “They’ve killed Roily!”

A siren howled, accompanied by the sound of running boots. A huge, beefy man appeared at the entrance of the cargo portal and reached down, almost tearing the lens from Rodrone’s hands and hauling it inboard. Taking Rodrone’s arm, he pulled him in after it.

Rodrone winced as the lens clanged to the floor. A gun-shot splattered white-hot metal from the side of the portal. Then the lid descended, cutting them off from the confusion of the spaceground… Gael Shone’s voice boomed from the loudspeaker set high on the wall. “What news down there?”

“All aboard, chief!” the beefy man called.

“Fine!” Shone’s voice rolled. “Then off we go!” Rodrone fancied he heard a faint thwang, but there was no sensation of acceleration and none of the expected engine noise. Jermy started climbing up a ladder.

“Here we are, gentlemen,” the loudspeaker continued. “Five hundred miles aloft, gathering speed and heading out. The captain invites his passengers for a short drink in the control gallery; see you when you’re ready.”

The loudspeaker clicked. Rodrone raised his eyes at the beefy man, who shrugged and led them up a side passage. The interior of the Stator was not without character of an austere, depressing kind. Its inner construction was mainly of a metal identical in appearance and texture to pig iron, and it consisted of holds and galleries, connected and surrounded by corridors and ledges, many protected from a steep drop only by flimsy railings. It was the most monochromatic environment Rodrone could remember seeing: the lighting was stark, and there was not a scrap of color anywhere. The whole effect reminded him strongly of a prison he had seen on the Frozen Continent of Bofor.

The control gallery, the center of Captain Shone’s life, was no different. It was oblong, forty feet long, fifteen feet wide and fifteen feet tall, and it was cold. A control desk stretching nearly the length of the gallery was its main item of furniture, though trophies, weapons and clothing hung on the walls, and Rodrone noticed that the ceiling possessed a purely ornamental scrollwork in black iron, without doubt the only decoration on the entire ship. A mattress and a heap of blankets thrown in one corner completed the picture.

One item in the control gallery, however, was of particular interest to Rodrone. It was located on the wall directly behind the console desk, so that the ship’s controller could see it only if he twisted around to look behind him.

At first glance it appeared to be a tunnel, or cavity inset in the wall, filled with an eerie light, or perhaps an illuminated sculpture.

But a few seconds scrutiny convinced him that it was in fact a picture of remarkable depth. The picture represented space for perhaps a hundred light-years around. By some miracle of ingenuity it managed to scale down distances, yet fit into the space a sizeable representation of each star—and hold it in proper relationship as the ship moved.

The effect of drawing together masses of suns already close in terms of astronomical distances was remarkable. The assembly seemed to be endowed with design and calculation. It was like a building for the gods, or like a great glowing machine.

The stars shone from the cavity with a hard steely light; but they seemed to hold back all kinds of tints and hues that glimmered beneath the outward appearance. It was a deep show of hidden color—the nearest thing to color itself aboard the Stator.

Captain Gael Shone, seated on the main throne of the console desk, favored them with a bleary, dark-eyed smile. He had already set out three glasses in front of him.

“Come and fill up, friends, and damn all police and planet-bound trash, eh?” He laughed slyly.

He noticed Rodrone staring at the picture behind him. “You like my little indicator, eh? I use it for navigation.”

“It’s magnificent,” Rodrone murmured.

“Yeah. You can’t see ’em, but the whole lot’s just crawling with men, like disease viruses in a golden palace.”

Rodrone smiled at the colorful metaphor, but he was struck by the image. He’s right, he thought. We don’t have any rightful place there. Even the stars obey celestial dynamics, but we’re all for lawlessness.

He shrugged. “I like it that way.”

“So do I.” Shone poured more drinks.

Rodrone tore his eyes from the picture. “Well, you’re expensive, Shone, but you do a good job. Thanks. What kind of drive do you use, by the way? I never heard of a completely silent technique before.”

“No thunder of the rockets in this outfit,” Shone agreed. He turned his attention to Clave. “I’ve met your boss, but I haven’t been introduced to you yet. What’s your name?”

“Clave Theory.”

“Of the old Theory family?” Shone looked interested.

Clave nodded, keeping his fixed glassy smile.

“Glad to have somebody aboard who comes from such a notable line. Old John Theory and his sons did great things for science, even if they did throw it in too many directions. He was a fine man. Still that was some time ago, and I guess the family’s scattered since then… he was uneducated, that was his trouble.”

Clave did not alter his expression. “It has scattered,” he agreed.

Rodrone took the proferred glass of foment and sipped it. “How long do you estimate for the trip?” he asked.

“About two weeks, subjective ship time.”

“What about Jal-Dee? We might be pursued.”

“Why then, we man the blisters! A foment rotation for every man, death to the first who takes his finger off the firing stud.” Shone chuckled lengthily. “Actually, the big fat merchants aren’t keen enough to chase us. They’ll simply tell the Streall we got away and then forget it. It’s the Streall we shall have to watch for.”

A silence descended, and all at once the atmosphere became calmer. Shone looked at Rodrone steadily, taking a pull on his drink. He shifted his feet to a higher ledge on the fronting of his desk and leaned back.

“You know what’s up with you?” he said suddenly. “You’re haunted. Haunted! It’s in your face. You were born with it. An incurable desire to follow up and find out, that’s your trouble. You just can’t let go, can you?”

Rodrone felt uncomfortable, but once he had decided not to answer the captain, he felt strangely relaxed.

Shone coughed. “You feel things too much, you know.” It seemed to Rodrone that the man had somehow deflated, that his moment of penetration had passed. “You ought to live just for whatever comes to hand, like me.”

The remark made Rodrone meditative. Later, when the conversation between the three of them had reached a deeper level of congeniality, and a great deal of foment had been drunk, he asked gently; “Have you happened on a planet called Sunder recently?”

“Sunder?”

“It’s Land V. I’ve got a wife there. I haven’t seen her for five years.”

“You don’t look like a wife deserter to me. How come she doesn’t move with you?”

Rodrone shrugged. Men who spent a lot of time in space generally kept their wives with them, especially in view of the time-dilation effect of interstellar voyaging, but he never had. “Just didn’t get around to it,” he answered simply.

He made no attempt to explain further. How could he explain their attunement with one another, their free attitude that obviated the need to be continually in each other’s presence? It would have embarrassed him to try.

“Sunder,” Shone repeated. That’s a strange kind of name.”

“Yeah.” Rodrone turned away. Most planets—many stars, for that matter—had names connected with their histories, and he did not feel like going into his home world’s now. It was a familiar enough story, in any case, of an emigrant fleet reaching an unknown star after considerable hardship, only to quarrel violently with consequences of disastrous war, when they reached safety.

He felt tempted to hire Captain Shone to make a further detour to the nearby Land system and pick up his wife. It would make a difference of about nine months, Objective Galactic Time, and a few weeks by subjective ship time. But time was one thing he did not wish to waste.

His intention now was to rejoin the squadron which he had learned was cruising somewhere in Skelter, and then continue with his study of the lens. He could not learn much from it on his own; his part of the investigation in the past year had mainly consisted of simply watching its fascinating dramas. He had to find help, but next time he sought that help he intended to take the protection of the squadron with him.

The idea had taken hold in his mind that in the lens he would discover the pattern of history. He was convinced that historical processes could be put on the same firm basis as physics or chemistry; like the ultimate particles of matter, they had to have causes, origins and intrinsic properties.

When Rodrone had first mulled over these questions many years ago, a fantastically simple, apposite guide to his actions had come to him, like a formula to guide a man’s life.

A man could either be an adventurer, taking what came and ready to take on more, or he could be an investigator, the scientific type, and try to discover where it came from. Rarely, individuals like Redace Trudo managed to combine both modes of life. Rodrone would have liked to think that he did, too, but he was aware of how weak he was scientifically.

The only alternative to these two was to stagnate, becoming more and more dull-minded according to the time and place. In this category were the bonded servants of the big merchants. Rodrone scarcely ever thought of these slaves and sycophants. They were like beasts of burden.

And the Streall? Did they actually have the answers to the questions that burned in Rodrone’s mind? Possibly they did, but if so, then Rodrone was almost frightened to learn them, so much was he repelled by their inhuman, predestined outlook.

Shone broke into his sudden moodiness, grinning sheepishly. “Drink up, man! You’ll come out of this all right!”

Wordlessly Rodrone took the proffered foment.