BUT THE INTERRUPTION had disturbed the tenor of
trading. The small chief who had so eagerly taken Paft’s
place had only two Koros stones to offer and even to Dane’s
inexperienced eyes they were inferior in size and color to those the
other clan leader had tendered. The Terrans were aware that Koros
mining was a dangerous business but they had not known that the
stock of available stones was so very small. Within ten minutes the
last of the serious bargaining was concluded and the clansmen were
drifting away from the burned over space about the Queen’s
standing fins.
Dane folded up the bargain cloth, glad for a task. He sensed
that he was far from being back in Van Rycke’s good graces.
The fact that his superior did not discuss any of the aspects of
the deals with him was a bad sign.
Captain Jellico stretched. Although his was not, or never, what
might be termed a good-humored face, he was at peace with his
world. “That would seem to be all. What’s the haul,
Van?”
“Ten first class stones, about fifty second grade, and
twenty or so of third. The chiefs will go to the fisheries
tomorrow. Then we’ll be in to see the really good
stuff.”
“And how’s the herbs holding out?” That
interested Dane too. Surely the few plants in the hydro and the
dried leaves could not be stretched too far.
“As well as we could expect.” Van Rycke frowned.
“But Craig thinks he’s on the trail of something to
help—”
The storm priests had uprooted the staff marking the trading
station and were wrapping the white streamer about it. Their leader
had already gone and now Tau came up to the group by the ramp.
“Van says you have an idea,” the Captain hailed
him.
“We haven’t tried it yet. And we can’t unless
the priests give it a clear lane—”
“That goes without saying—” Jellico
agreed.
The Captain had not addressed that remark to him personally, but
Dane was sure it had been directed at him. Well, they needn’t
worry—never again was he going to make that mistake, they
could be very sure of that.
He was part of the conference which followed in the mess cabin
only because he was a member of the crew. How far the reason for his disgrace had spread he had no way of telling,
but he made no overtures, even to Rip.
Tau had the floor with Mura as an efficient lieutenant. He
discussed the properties of catnip and gave information on the
limited supply the Queen carried. Then he launched into a new
suggestion.
“Felines of Terra, in fact a great many other of our
native mammals, have a similar affinity for this.”
Mura produced a small flask and Tau opened it, passing it to
Captain Jellico and so from hand to hand about the room. Each
crewman sniffed at the strong aroma. It was a heavier scent than
that given off by the crushed catnip—Dane was not sure he
liked it. But a moment later Sinbad streaked in from the corridor
and committed the unpardonable sin of leaping to the table top just
before Mura who had taken the flask from Dane. He miaowed
plantively and clawed at the steward’s cuff. Mura stoppered
the flask and put the cat down on the floor.
“What is it?” Jellico wanted to know.
“Anisette, a liquor made from the oil of anise—from
seeds of the anise plant. It is a stimulant, but we use it mainly
as a condiment. If it is harmless for the Salariki it ought to be a
bigger bargaining point than any perfumes or spices I-S can
import. And remember, with their unlimited capital, they can flood
the market with products we can’t touch, selling at a loss if
need be to cut us out. Because their ship is not going to lift from
Sargol just because she has no legal right here.”
“There’s this point,” Van Rycke added to the
lecture. “The Eysies are trading or want to trade perfumes.
But they stock only manufactured products, exotic stuff, but
synthetic.” He took from his belt pouch two tiny boxes.
Before he caught the rich scent of the paste inside them Dane
had already identified each as luxury items from Casper—chemical products which sold well and at high prices in the
civilized ports of the Galaxy. The Cargo-master turned the boxes
over, exposing the symbol on their undersides—the mark of
I-S.
”These were offered to me in trade by a Salarik. I took
them, just to have proof that the Eysies are operating here.
But—note—they were offered to me in trade, along with
two top Koros for what? One spoonful of dried catnip leaves. Does
that suggest anything?”
Mura answered first. “The Salariki prefer natural products
to synthetic.”
“I think so.”
“D’you suppose that was Cam’s secret?”
speculated Astrogator Steen Wilcox.
“If it was,” Jellico cut in, “he certainly
kept it! If we had only known this earlier—”
They were all thinking of that, of their storage space carefully
packed with useless trade goods. Where, if they had known, the same
space could have carried herbs with five or twenty-five times as
much buying power.
“Maybe now that their sales resistance is broken,
we can switch to some of the other stuff,” Tang Ya,
torn away from his beloved communicators for the conference, said
wistfully. “They like color—how about breaking out some
rolls of Harlinian moth silk?”
Van Rycke sighed wearily. “Oh, we’ll try.
We’ll bring out everything and anything. But we could have
done so much better—” he brooded over the tricks of fate
which had landed them on a planet wild for trade with no proper
trade goods in either of their holds.
There was a nervous little sound of a throat being
apologetically cleared. Jasper Weeks, the small wiper from the
engine room detail, the third generation Venusian colonist whom the
more vocal members of the Queen’s compliment were apt to
forget upon occasion, seeing all eyes upon him, spoke though his
voice was hardly above a hoarse whisper, “Cedar—lacquel bark—forsh
weed—”
“Cinnamon,” Mura added to the list. “Imported
in small quantities—”
“Naturally! Only the problem now is—how much
cedar, lacquel bark, forsh weed, cinnamon do we have on board?”
demanded Van Rycke.
His sarcasm did not register with Weeks, for the little man
pushed by Dane and left the cabin to their surprise. In the quiet
which followed they could hear the clatter of his boots on ladder
rungs as he descended to the quarters of the engine room staff.
Tang turned to his neighbor, Johan Stotz, the Queen’s
Engineer.
“What’s he going for?”
Stotz shrugged. Weeks was a self-effacing man—so much so
that even in the cramped quarters of the spacer very little about
him as an individual impressed his mates—a fact which was
slowly dawning on them all now. Then they heard the scramble of
feet hurrying back and Weeks burst in with energy which carried him
across to the table behind which the Captain and Van Rycke now
sat.
In the wiper’s hands was a plasta-steel box—the
treasure chest of a spaceman. Its tough exterior was guaranteed to
protect the contents against everything but outright
disintegration. Weeks put it down on the table and snapped up the
lid.
A new aroma, or aromas, was added to the scents now at war in
the cabin. Weeks pulled out a handful of fluffy white stuff which
frothed up about his fingers like soap lather. Then with more care
he lifted up a tray divided into many small compartments, each with
a separate sealing lid of its own. The men of the Queen moved in,
their curiosity aroused, until they were jostling one another.
Being tall Dane had an advantage, though Van Rycke’s bulk
and the wide shoulders of the Captain were between him and the
object they were so intent upon. In each division of the tray,
easily seen through the transparent lids, was a carved
figure. The weird denizens of the Venusian polar swamps were
there, along with life-like effigies of Terran animals, a Martian
sand-mouse in all its monstrous ferocity, and the native animal and
reptile life of half a hundred different worlds. Weeks put down a
second tray beside the first, again displaying a menagerie of strange life forms. But
when he clicked open one of the compartments and handed the
figurine it contained to the Captain, Dane understood the reason
for now bringing forward the carvings.
The majority of them were fashioned from a dull blue-gray wood
and Dane knew that if he picked one up he would discover that it
weighed close to nothing in his hand. That was lacquel
bark—the aromatic product of a Venusian vine. And each little
animal or reptile lay encased in a soft dab of frothy
white—frosh weed—the perfumed seed casing of the
Martian canal plants. One or two figures on the second tray were of
a red-brown wood and these Van Rycke sniffed at appreciatively.
“Cedar—Terran cedar,” he murmured.
Weeks nodded eagerly, his eyes alight. “I am waiting now
for sandalwood—it is also good for carving—”
Jellico stared at the array in puzzled wonder. “You have
made these?”
Being an amateur xenobiologist of no small standing himself, the
shapes of the carvings more than the material from which they
fashioned held his attention.
All those on board the Queen had their own hobbies. The monotony
of voyaging through hyper-space had long ago impressed upon men the
need for occupying both hands and mind during the sterile days
while they were forced into close companionship with few duties to
keep them alert. Jellico’s cabin was papered with tri-dee
pictures of the rare animals and alien creatures he had studied in
their native haunts or of which he kept careful and painstaking
records. Tau had his magic, Mura not only his plants but the
delicate miniature landscapes he fashioned, to be imprisoned
forever in the hearts of protecting plasta balls. But Weeks had
never shown his work before and now he had an artist’s
supreme pleasure of completely confounding his shipmates. The
Cargo-master returned to the business on hand first.
“You’re willing to transfer these to
‘cargo’?” he asked briskly. “How many do
you have?”
Weeks, now lifting a third and then a fourth tray from the box,
replied without looking up.
“Two hundred. Yes, I’ll transfer, sir.”
The Captain was turning about in his fingers the beautifully
shaped figure of an Astran duocorn. “Pity to trade these
here,” he mused aloud. “Will Paft or Halfner appreciate
more than just their scent?”
Weeks smiled shyly. “I’ve filled this case, sir. I
was going to offer them to Mr. Van Rycke on a venture. I can always
make another set. And right now—well, maybe they’ll be
worth more to the Queen, seeing as how they’re made out of
aromatic woods, than they’d be elsewhere. Leastwise the
Eysies aren’t going to have anything like them to
show!” he ended in a burst of honest pride.
“Indeed they aren’t!” Van Rycke gave honor
where it was due.
So they made plans and then separated to sleep out the rest of
the night. Dane knew that his lapse was not forgotten nor forgiven,
but now he was honestly too tired to care and slept as well as if
his conscience were clear.
But morning brought only a trickle of lower class clansmen for
trading and none of them had much but news to offer. The storm
priests, as neutral arbitrators, had divided up the Koros grounds.
And the clansmen, under the personal supervision of their
chieftains, were busy hunting the stones. The Terrans gathered from
scraps of information that gem seeking on such a large scale had
never been attempted before.
Before night there came other news, and much more chilling.
Paft, one of the two major chieftains of this section of
Sargol—while supervising the efforts of his liege men on a
newly discovered and richly strewn length of shoal water-had been
attacked and killed by Gorp. The unusual activity of the Salariki
in the shallows had in turn drawn to the spot battalions of the
intelligent, malignant reptiles who had struck in strength, slaying
and escaping before the Salariki could form an adequate defense, having killed the land dwellers’
sentries silently and effectively before advancing on the laboring
main bodies of gem hunters.
A loss of a certain number of miners or fishers had been
foreseen as the price one paid for Koros in quantity. But the death
of a chieftain was another thing altogether, having repercussions
which carried far beyond the fact of his death. When the news
reached the Salariki about the Queen they melted away into the
grass forest and for the first time the Terrans felt free of spying
eyes.
“What happens now?” Ali inquired. “Do they
declare all deals off?”
“That might just be the unfortunate answer,” agreed
Van Rycke.
“Could be,” Rip commented to Dane, “that
they’d think we were in someway responsible—”
But Dane’s conscience, sensitive over the whole matter of
Salariki trade, had already reached that conclusion.
The Terran party, unsure of what were the best tactics, wisely
decided to do nothing at all for the time being. But, when the
Salariki seemed to have completely vanished on the morning of the
second day, the men were restless. Had Paft’s death resulted
in some inter-clan quarrel over the heirship and the other clans
withdrawn to let the various contendents for that honor fight it
out? Or—what was more probable and dangerous—had the
aliens come to the point of view that the Queen was in the main
responsible for the catastrophe and were engaged in preparing too
warm a welcome for any Traders who dared to visit them?
With the latter idea in mind they did not stray far from the
ship. And the limit of their traveling was the edge of the forest
from which they could be covered and so they did not learn
much.
It was well into the morning before they were dramatically
appraised that, far from being considered in any way an enemy, they
were about to be accepted in a tie as close as clan to clan during
one of the temporary but binding truces.
The messenger came in state, a young Salarik warrior, his
splendid cloak rent and hanging in tattered pieces from his
shoulders as a sign of his official grief. He carried in one hand a
burned out torch, and in the other an unsheathed claw knife, its
blade reflecting the sunlight with a wicked glitter. Behind him
trotted three couples of retainers, their cloaks also ragged
fringes, their knives drawn.
Standing up on the ramp to receive what could only be a formal
deputation were Captain, Astrogator, Cargo-master and Engineer, the
senior officers of the spacer.
In the rolling periods of the Trade Lingo the torch bearer
identified himself as Groft, son and heir of the late lamented
Paft. Until his chieftain father was avenged in blood he could not
assume the high seat of his clan nor the leadership of the family.
And now, following custom, he was inviting the friends and sometime
allies of the dead Paft to a Gorp hunt. Such a Gorp hunt, Dane
gathered from amidst the flowers of ceremonial Salariki speech, as
had never been planned before on the face of Sargol. Salariki
without number in the past had died beneath the ripping talons of
the water reptiles, but it was seldom that a chieftain had so
fallen and his clan were firm in their determination to take a full
blood price from the killers.
“—and so, sky lords,” Groft brought his
oration to a close, “we come to ask that you send your young
men to this hunting so that they may know the joy of plunging
knives into the scaled death and see the horned ones die bathed in
their own vile blood!”
Dane needed no hint from the Queen’s officers that this
invitation was a sharp departure from custom. By joining with the
natives in such a foray the Terrans were being admitted to kinship
of a sort, cementing relations by a tie which the I-S, or any other
interloper from off-world, would find hard to break. It was a piece
of such excellent good fortune as they would not have dreamed of
three days earlier.
Van Rycke replied, his voice properly sonorous, sounding out the
rounded periods of the rolling tongue which they had all been taught during the voyage, using Cam’s recordings.
Yes, the Terrans would join with pleasure in so good and great a
cause. They would lend the force of their arms to the defeat of all
Gorp they had the good fortune to meet. Groft need only name the
hour for them to join him—
It was not needful, the young Salariki chieftain-to-be hastened
to tell the Cargo-master, that the senior sky lords concern
themselves in this matter. In fact it would be against custom, for
it was meet that such a hunt be left to warriors of few years, that
they might earn glory and be able to stand before the fires at the
Naming as men. Therefore—the thumb claw of Groft was extended
to its greatest length as he used it to single out the Terrans he
had been eyeing—let this one, and that, and that, and the
fourth be ready to join with the Salariki party an hour after
nooning on this very day and they would indeed teach the slimy,
treacherous lurkers in the depths a well needed lesson.
The Salarik’s choice with one exception had unerringly
fallen upon the youngest members of the crew, Ali, Rip, and Dane in
that order. But his fourth addition had been Jasper Weeks. Perhaps
because of his native pallor of skin and slightness of body the
oiler had seemed, to the alien, to be younger than his years. At
any rate Groft had made it very plain that he chose these men and
Dane knew that the Queen’s officers would raise no objection
which might upset the delicate balance of favorable relations.
Van Rycke did ask for one concession which was reluctantly
granted. He received permission for the spacer’s men to carry
their sleep rods. Though the Salariki, apparently for some reason
of binding and hoary custom, were totally opposed to hunting their
age-old enemy with anything other than their duelists’
weapons of net and claw knife.
“Go along with them,” Captain Jellico gave his final
orders to the four, “as long as it doesn’t mean your
own necks—understand? On the other hand dead heroes have never
helped to lift a ship. And these Gorp are tough from all accounts.
You’ll just have to use your own judgment about springing your rods on them—” He looked distinctly
unhappy at that thought.
Ali was grinning and little Weeks tightened his weapon belt with
a touch of swagger he had never shown before. Rip was his usual
soft voiced self, dependable as a rock and a good base for the rest
of them—taking command without question as they marched off
to join Groft’s company.
BUT THE INTERRUPTION had disturbed the tenor of
trading. The small chief who had so eagerly taken Paft’s
place had only two Koros stones to offer and even to Dane’s
inexperienced eyes they were inferior in size and color to those the
other clan leader had tendered. The Terrans were aware that Koros
mining was a dangerous business but they had not known that the
stock of available stones was so very small. Within ten minutes the
last of the serious bargaining was concluded and the clansmen were
drifting away from the burned over space about the Queen’s
standing fins.
Dane folded up the bargain cloth, glad for a task. He sensed
that he was far from being back in Van Rycke’s good graces.
The fact that his superior did not discuss any of the aspects of
the deals with him was a bad sign.
Captain Jellico stretched. Although his was not, or never, what
might be termed a good-humored face, he was at peace with his
world. “That would seem to be all. What’s the haul,
Van?”
“Ten first class stones, about fifty second grade, and
twenty or so of third. The chiefs will go to the fisheries
tomorrow. Then we’ll be in to see the really good
stuff.”
“And how’s the herbs holding out?” That
interested Dane too. Surely the few plants in the hydro and the
dried leaves could not be stretched too far.
“As well as we could expect.” Van Rycke frowned.
“But Craig thinks he’s on the trail of something to
help—”
The storm priests had uprooted the staff marking the trading
station and were wrapping the white streamer about it. Their leader
had already gone and now Tau came up to the group by the ramp.
“Van says you have an idea,” the Captain hailed
him.
“We haven’t tried it yet. And we can’t unless
the priests give it a clear lane—”
“That goes without saying—” Jellico
agreed.
The Captain had not addressed that remark to him personally, but
Dane was sure it had been directed at him. Well, they needn’t
worry—never again was he going to make that mistake, they
could be very sure of that.
He was part of the conference which followed in the mess cabin
only because he was a member of the crew. How far the reason for his disgrace had spread he had no way of telling,
but he made no overtures, even to Rip.
Tau had the floor with Mura as an efficient lieutenant. He
discussed the properties of catnip and gave information on the
limited supply the Queen carried. Then he launched into a new
suggestion.
“Felines of Terra, in fact a great many other of our
native mammals, have a similar affinity for this.”
Mura produced a small flask and Tau opened it, passing it to
Captain Jellico and so from hand to hand about the room. Each
crewman sniffed at the strong aroma. It was a heavier scent than
that given off by the crushed catnip—Dane was not sure he
liked it. But a moment later Sinbad streaked in from the corridor
and committed the unpardonable sin of leaping to the table top just
before Mura who had taken the flask from Dane. He miaowed
plantively and clawed at the steward’s cuff. Mura stoppered
the flask and put the cat down on the floor.
“What is it?” Jellico wanted to know.
“Anisette, a liquor made from the oil of anise—from
seeds of the anise plant. It is a stimulant, but we use it mainly
as a condiment. If it is harmless for the Salariki it ought to be a
bigger bargaining point than any perfumes or spices I-S can
import. And remember, with their unlimited capital, they can flood
the market with products we can’t touch, selling at a loss if
need be to cut us out. Because their ship is not going to lift from
Sargol just because she has no legal right here.”
“There’s this point,” Van Rycke added to the
lecture. “The Eysies are trading or want to trade perfumes.
But they stock only manufactured products, exotic stuff, but
synthetic.” He took from his belt pouch two tiny boxes.
Before he caught the rich scent of the paste inside them Dane
had already identified each as luxury items from Casper—chemical products which sold well and at high prices in the
civilized ports of the Galaxy. The Cargo-master turned the boxes
over, exposing the symbol on their undersides—the mark of
I-S.
”These were offered to me in trade by a Salarik. I took
them, just to have proof that the Eysies are operating here.
But—note—they were offered to me in trade, along with
two top Koros for what? One spoonful of dried catnip leaves. Does
that suggest anything?”
Mura answered first. “The Salariki prefer natural products
to synthetic.”
“I think so.”
“D’you suppose that was Cam’s secret?”
speculated Astrogator Steen Wilcox.
“If it was,” Jellico cut in, “he certainly
kept it! If we had only known this earlier—”
They were all thinking of that, of their storage space carefully
packed with useless trade goods. Where, if they had known, the same
space could have carried herbs with five or twenty-five times as
much buying power.
“Maybe now that their sales resistance is broken,
we can switch to some of the other stuff,” Tang Ya,
torn away from his beloved communicators for the conference, said
wistfully. “They like color—how about breaking out some
rolls of Harlinian moth silk?”
Van Rycke sighed wearily. “Oh, we’ll try.
We’ll bring out everything and anything. But we could have
done so much better—” he brooded over the tricks of fate
which had landed them on a planet wild for trade with no proper
trade goods in either of their holds.
There was a nervous little sound of a throat being
apologetically cleared. Jasper Weeks, the small wiper from the
engine room detail, the third generation Venusian colonist whom the
more vocal members of the Queen’s compliment were apt to
forget upon occasion, seeing all eyes upon him, spoke though his
voice was hardly above a hoarse whisper, “Cedar—lacquel bark—forsh
weed—”
“Cinnamon,” Mura added to the list. “Imported
in small quantities—”
“Naturally! Only the problem now is—how much
cedar, lacquel bark, forsh weed, cinnamon do we have on board?”
demanded Van Rycke.
His sarcasm did not register with Weeks, for the little man
pushed by Dane and left the cabin to their surprise. In the quiet
which followed they could hear the clatter of his boots on ladder
rungs as he descended to the quarters of the engine room staff.
Tang turned to his neighbor, Johan Stotz, the Queen’s
Engineer.
“What’s he going for?”
Stotz shrugged. Weeks was a self-effacing man—so much so
that even in the cramped quarters of the spacer very little about
him as an individual impressed his mates—a fact which was
slowly dawning on them all now. Then they heard the scramble of
feet hurrying back and Weeks burst in with energy which carried him
across to the table behind which the Captain and Van Rycke now
sat.
In the wiper’s hands was a plasta-steel box—the
treasure chest of a spaceman. Its tough exterior was guaranteed to
protect the contents against everything but outright
disintegration. Weeks put it down on the table and snapped up the
lid.
A new aroma, or aromas, was added to the scents now at war in
the cabin. Weeks pulled out a handful of fluffy white stuff which
frothed up about his fingers like soap lather. Then with more care
he lifted up a tray divided into many small compartments, each with
a separate sealing lid of its own. The men of the Queen moved in,
their curiosity aroused, until they were jostling one another.
Being tall Dane had an advantage, though Van Rycke’s bulk
and the wide shoulders of the Captain were between him and the
object they were so intent upon. In each division of the tray,
easily seen through the transparent lids, was a carved
figure. The weird denizens of the Venusian polar swamps were
there, along with life-like effigies of Terran animals, a Martian
sand-mouse in all its monstrous ferocity, and the native animal and
reptile life of half a hundred different worlds. Weeks put down a
second tray beside the first, again displaying a menagerie of strange life forms. But
when he clicked open one of the compartments and handed the
figurine it contained to the Captain, Dane understood the reason
for now bringing forward the carvings.
The majority of them were fashioned from a dull blue-gray wood
and Dane knew that if he picked one up he would discover that it
weighed close to nothing in his hand. That was lacquel
bark—the aromatic product of a Venusian vine. And each little
animal or reptile lay encased in a soft dab of frothy
white—frosh weed—the perfumed seed casing of the
Martian canal plants. One or two figures on the second tray were of
a red-brown wood and these Van Rycke sniffed at appreciatively.
“Cedar—Terran cedar,” he murmured.
Weeks nodded eagerly, his eyes alight. “I am waiting now
for sandalwood—it is also good for carving—”
Jellico stared at the array in puzzled wonder. “You have
made these?”
Being an amateur xenobiologist of no small standing himself, the
shapes of the carvings more than the material from which they
fashioned held his attention.
All those on board the Queen had their own hobbies. The monotony
of voyaging through hyper-space had long ago impressed upon men the
need for occupying both hands and mind during the sterile days
while they were forced into close companionship with few duties to
keep them alert. Jellico’s cabin was papered with tri-dee
pictures of the rare animals and alien creatures he had studied in
their native haunts or of which he kept careful and painstaking
records. Tau had his magic, Mura not only his plants but the
delicate miniature landscapes he fashioned, to be imprisoned
forever in the hearts of protecting plasta balls. But Weeks had
never shown his work before and now he had an artist’s
supreme pleasure of completely confounding his shipmates. The
Cargo-master returned to the business on hand first.
“You’re willing to transfer these to
‘cargo’?” he asked briskly. “How many do
you have?”
Weeks, now lifting a third and then a fourth tray from the box,
replied without looking up.
“Two hundred. Yes, I’ll transfer, sir.”
The Captain was turning about in his fingers the beautifully
shaped figure of an Astran duocorn. “Pity to trade these
here,” he mused aloud. “Will Paft or Halfner appreciate
more than just their scent?”
Weeks smiled shyly. “I’ve filled this case, sir. I
was going to offer them to Mr. Van Rycke on a venture. I can always
make another set. And right now—well, maybe they’ll be
worth more to the Queen, seeing as how they’re made out of
aromatic woods, than they’d be elsewhere. Leastwise the
Eysies aren’t going to have anything like them to
show!” he ended in a burst of honest pride.
“Indeed they aren’t!” Van Rycke gave honor
where it was due.
So they made plans and then separated to sleep out the rest of
the night. Dane knew that his lapse was not forgotten nor forgiven,
but now he was honestly too tired to care and slept as well as if
his conscience were clear.
But morning brought only a trickle of lower class clansmen for
trading and none of them had much but news to offer. The storm
priests, as neutral arbitrators, had divided up the Koros grounds.
And the clansmen, under the personal supervision of their
chieftains, were busy hunting the stones. The Terrans gathered from
scraps of information that gem seeking on such a large scale had
never been attempted before.
Before night there came other news, and much more chilling.
Paft, one of the two major chieftains of this section of
Sargol—while supervising the efforts of his liege men on a
newly discovered and richly strewn length of shoal water-had been
attacked and killed by Gorp. The unusual activity of the Salariki
in the shallows had in turn drawn to the spot battalions of the
intelligent, malignant reptiles who had struck in strength, slaying
and escaping before the Salariki could form an adequate defense, having killed the land dwellers’
sentries silently and effectively before advancing on the laboring
main bodies of gem hunters.
A loss of a certain number of miners or fishers had been
foreseen as the price one paid for Koros in quantity. But the death
of a chieftain was another thing altogether, having repercussions
which carried far beyond the fact of his death. When the news
reached the Salariki about the Queen they melted away into the
grass forest and for the first time the Terrans felt free of spying
eyes.
“What happens now?” Ali inquired. “Do they
declare all deals off?”
“That might just be the unfortunate answer,” agreed
Van Rycke.
“Could be,” Rip commented to Dane, “that
they’d think we were in someway responsible—”
But Dane’s conscience, sensitive over the whole matter of
Salariki trade, had already reached that conclusion.
The Terran party, unsure of what were the best tactics, wisely
decided to do nothing at all for the time being. But, when the
Salariki seemed to have completely vanished on the morning of the
second day, the men were restless. Had Paft’s death resulted
in some inter-clan quarrel over the heirship and the other clans
withdrawn to let the various contendents for that honor fight it
out? Or—what was more probable and dangerous—had the
aliens come to the point of view that the Queen was in the main
responsible for the catastrophe and were engaged in preparing too
warm a welcome for any Traders who dared to visit them?
With the latter idea in mind they did not stray far from the
ship. And the limit of their traveling was the edge of the forest
from which they could be covered and so they did not learn
much.
It was well into the morning before they were dramatically
appraised that, far from being considered in any way an enemy, they
were about to be accepted in a tie as close as clan to clan during
one of the temporary but binding truces.
The messenger came in state, a young Salarik warrior, his
splendid cloak rent and hanging in tattered pieces from his
shoulders as a sign of his official grief. He carried in one hand a
burned out torch, and in the other an unsheathed claw knife, its
blade reflecting the sunlight with a wicked glitter. Behind him
trotted three couples of retainers, their cloaks also ragged
fringes, their knives drawn.
Standing up on the ramp to receive what could only be a formal
deputation were Captain, Astrogator, Cargo-master and Engineer, the
senior officers of the spacer.
In the rolling periods of the Trade Lingo the torch bearer
identified himself as Groft, son and heir of the late lamented
Paft. Until his chieftain father was avenged in blood he could not
assume the high seat of his clan nor the leadership of the family.
And now, following custom, he was inviting the friends and sometime
allies of the dead Paft to a Gorp hunt. Such a Gorp hunt, Dane
gathered from amidst the flowers of ceremonial Salariki speech, as
had never been planned before on the face of Sargol. Salariki
without number in the past had died beneath the ripping talons of
the water reptiles, but it was seldom that a chieftain had so
fallen and his clan were firm in their determination to take a full
blood price from the killers.
“—and so, sky lords,” Groft brought his
oration to a close, “we come to ask that you send your young
men to this hunting so that they may know the joy of plunging
knives into the scaled death and see the horned ones die bathed in
their own vile blood!”
Dane needed no hint from the Queen’s officers that this
invitation was a sharp departure from custom. By joining with the
natives in such a foray the Terrans were being admitted to kinship
of a sort, cementing relations by a tie which the I-S, or any other
interloper from off-world, would find hard to break. It was a piece
of such excellent good fortune as they would not have dreamed of
three days earlier.
Van Rycke replied, his voice properly sonorous, sounding out the
rounded periods of the rolling tongue which they had all been taught during the voyage, using Cam’s recordings.
Yes, the Terrans would join with pleasure in so good and great a
cause. They would lend the force of their arms to the defeat of all
Gorp they had the good fortune to meet. Groft need only name the
hour for them to join him—
It was not needful, the young Salariki chieftain-to-be hastened
to tell the Cargo-master, that the senior sky lords concern
themselves in this matter. In fact it would be against custom, for
it was meet that such a hunt be left to warriors of few years, that
they might earn glory and be able to stand before the fires at the
Naming as men. Therefore—the thumb claw of Groft was extended
to its greatest length as he used it to single out the Terrans he
had been eyeing—let this one, and that, and that, and the
fourth be ready to join with the Salariki party an hour after
nooning on this very day and they would indeed teach the slimy,
treacherous lurkers in the depths a well needed lesson.
The Salarik’s choice with one exception had unerringly
fallen upon the youngest members of the crew, Ali, Rip, and Dane in
that order. But his fourth addition had been Jasper Weeks. Perhaps
because of his native pallor of skin and slightness of body the
oiler had seemed, to the alien, to be younger than his years. At
any rate Groft had made it very plain that he chose these men and
Dane knew that the Queen’s officers would raise no objection
which might upset the delicate balance of favorable relations.
Van Rycke did ask for one concession which was reluctantly
granted. He received permission for the spacer’s men to carry
their sleep rods. Though the Salariki, apparently for some reason
of binding and hoary custom, were totally opposed to hunting their
age-old enemy with anything other than their duelists’
weapons of net and claw knife.
“Go along with them,” Captain Jellico gave his final
orders to the four, “as long as it doesn’t mean your
own necks—understand? On the other hand dead heroes have never
helped to lift a ship. And these Gorp are tough from all accounts.
You’ll just have to use your own judgment about springing your rods on them—” He looked distinctly
unhappy at that thought.
Ali was grinning and little Weeks tightened his weapon belt with
a touch of swagger he had never shown before. Rip was his usual
soft voiced self, dependable as a rock and a good base for the rest
of them—taking command without question as they marched off
to join Groft’s company.