Tikil at night, or at least during the early
hours of the night, was more crowded than by day. Horan called an
accommodation flitter for his crosstown journey to the Hunter
Headquarters, but he decided to use the roll walk on his return. He
was going toward it when Harse hailed him, just in front of the
building.
“You seek Rerne?”
“I brought the fussel, by Merchant Kyger’s
orders.” Troy was put on the defensive by the other’s
attitude. During their brief time together Rerne had never made him
conscious of the Dipple. With the other rangers Horan was ever
aware of his knifeless belt and the fact he was a planetless
man.
“There is a message,” Harse replied aloofly.
“Rerne wishes to speak with you—”
“But I was just told he is not here.”
“So he is elsewhere. Come!”
Troy was tempted to reply “no” to that curt order.
After all, he was not under contract to Rerne. Yet he could not
deny that he was interested to learn why Harse had been sent to
find him.
The other was as adept at threading a fast passage through the
crowds as he might have been in finding a path through the forests.
And he brought Troy not to any office or lounge, but to one of
those small eating places that sprang up overnight by public favor
and disappeared as quickly when some newer attraction drew the
fickle pleasure seekers.
“Fourth booth,” Harse said and left him.
Troy pushed his way in and discovered that his shop livery did
not make him conspicuous here. This café definitely catered to
subcitizens and the lower ranks of shop employees. Two of the
booths were curtained, signifying private parties. But there were
two men without feminine company in the one to which he had been
directed.
Rerne, wearing shop livery, sat with his back against the wall.
And with him was an older man in a dark tunic lacking any emblems
of rank, yet equipped with that indefinable aura of authority that
Troy recognized as the inborn assurance of a man who has held
responsibility from his early years.
“Horan—” Rerne uttered his name in what might
be a greeting, but more likely was an introduction for the
stranger’s benefit.
“Rogarkil.” Now the stranger nodded to Troy.
“You have taken permanent contract with Kyger?”
Rerne shot that question at him bluntly, even as he waved the
younger man to a seat.
“I will—tomorrow—” A subtle tone in the
other’s demand made him uneasy, put him on the
defensive—why, he could not have said.
“You are now under a short-term one?” That was
Rogarkil.
“That is so.”
“And if you should be offered employment
elsewhere?”
“I have given my word to Merchant Kyger. He would have to
agree to my going.”
Rogarkil smiled wryly. “There are always such
disadvantages when one deals with honorable men. And to deal with
dishonorable ones is to lose before one takes the first stride in a
race. So at this hour you are still Merchant Kyger’s
man?”
“I am.”
What did they want of him? This talk of honor and dishonor made
Troy uncomfortable. But Rerne did not give him time to speculate
about the meanings that might lie behind their fencing blades of
words.
“There are questions you can answer, which will in no way
break contract. For example: Is it not true that Merchant Kyger is
now in the process of importing a Terran animal known as a fox at
the express order of the Great Leader?”
“You yourself heard that order given, Gentle
Homo.”
“And he has imported other Terran animals?”
“As you say, Gentle Homo, he has imported other Terran
animals. This must be general knowledge, since the display of such
pets is the pleasure of those who buy them.”
“A pair of cats for the Gentle Fem San duk Var, a
kinkajou for Sattor Commander Di—”
“I am a cleaner of cages and do general labor for the
worthy merchant,” Troy returned stiffly. “I do not make
sales, nor do I see many of the great ones who buy.”
“But among those cages that you clean,” cut in
Rogarkil, “are doubtless those of some of these exotics. You
have seen some of them with your own eyes, young man?”
Troy kept strictly to the record. “I was with Subcitizen
Zul when he went to the port to accept delivery of the
cats—”
“And you met with some trouble that
morning—”
Troy looked slowly from one man to the other. “Gentle
Homos,” he said softly, “if I speak now to patrollers
not in uniform, I have the right to know that fact. There is still
law to protect a man in Tikil—even one from the
Dipple.”
Rogarkil grimaced. “Yes, you are entirely within your
rights, young man, to deliver such a counterthrust as that. No, we
are not patrollers—nor do we represent the law of Tikil. This
is a Clan matter. Do you understand what that means?”
“Even in the Dipple, Gentle Homo, men have ears and lips.
Yes, I know that the Clans are older than the city law, that they
are rumored to have powers even beyond those of the Council
Governor-General. But they are of the Clans and for the Clans. I am
of the Dipple and if I am to climb out of the Dipple, I must do so
under the laws of Tikil. Why you ask me these questions I do not
know, but I hold by contract rights. This much I will say—and
it is no more than you can learn from the patroller records—I
have seen the cats. And I took the kinkajou from the villa of
Sattor Commander Di. It had been frightened by rough handling
there. I have seen the foxes, which are now in the shop. Why should
these facts be of any importance?”
“That is what we are striving to learn,” Rogarkil
answered enigmatically. “You are right, Horan. Clan law does
not run in Tikil. But remember that it does run
elsewhere—”
“A threat—or a warning, Gentle Homo?”
“A warning. We have reason to believe that you walk on the
rim of a whirlpool, young man. Take good care that you do not leap
into its current.”
“That is all you have to ask me?”
Rogarkil waved his hand in dismissal. But Rerne arose as Troy
did.
“I will see Merchant Kyger.”
“Not tonight. The shop is closed.”
Both men eyed him now as if he had made some fateful
announcement.
“Why?”
“Kyger had an errand—”
Rerne turned to his companion, spoke a sharply accented sentence
in a language that was not Galbasic. Rogarkil asked Troy another
question: “Is not this foreign to your regular
routine?”
“Yes.”
“So—well, maybe Merchant Kyger’s personal
affairs are beginning to press him more acutely,” he
commented. “One cannot carry a knife in two quarrels and give
equal attention to both. But the foxes are still there?” He
turned to Troy. “And where is the kinkajou you took from
Di’s villa—also in the shop?”
Troy shrugged. “When I returned from the Wild, it was gone
from the cage room. Perhaps it was restored to the Sattor
Commander’s heirs. It is a very valuable asset of the
estate.”
“Kyger did not return it so,” Rerne stated with
finality. He was watching Troy narrowly now, coldly.
“It was gone from its cage.” Troy repeated the
part-truth stubbornly. He was not going to add to that when he did
not know the game they were playing—the nature of this
“whirlpool” in which he, too, could be trapped.
“The boy is right, of course,” Rogarkil said.
“Employed as casual labor, he would have no reason to know
more than he has noticed. And he is a man under contract, apart
from our problems. It is a pity this is so now, Horan. Under other
circumstances we might have been of mutual assistance to one
another. A rider of Norden is not too far removed in aspirations
and desires from a Hunter of Korwar.”
“There are no riders on Norden today,” Troy pointed
out. He was watching Rerne, and again it seemed to him that the
Hunter was two-minded, about to speak and then thinking better of
it. Instead he nodded and Troy took that gesture for one of
dismissal. He lifted his own hand in a small salute—one of
equality though he was not aware of that—and walked away from
the booth. Why was he gnawed by the feeling that he had just
slammed a door irrevocably, a door that might have opened on a new
world? There was an ache of disappointment in him that was like the
bite of an old unappeasable hunger.
He pushed through the crowds, hardly noticing those about him,
made his way back to the shop and the side entrance into the
courtyard. Slapping his hand against the signal plate, he waited
for the night yardman to activate the open beam for him. But
instead, at that touch from his open palm, the panel swung inward
and he was looking down the short covered way, a way that was
unnaturally dim as if the usual night-radiance bars there had been
set at least two notches lower than was normal.
Troy’s stunner was in the bunk room. He was unarmed, and
he had no intention of walking that courtyard without some form of
defense. The door had no right to be open; the dimmed lights
underlined that silent warning. He could well be facing a trap.
Now he unfastened the polished silver buckles of his belt. The
strip of metal-encrusted leather was the only thing on him that
could serve as a weapon. With one end grasped tightly in his fist,
the length ready to use as a lash, he edged along the wall of the
passage, listening to catch any sound from the courtyard
beyond.
The mild complaints of the animals penned there could cover an
attack. But from whom and for what purpose? Troy reached the end of
the passage, flattened his body against the wall just inside the
entrance, and surveyed the open. There was something wrong about
the south side—
Then he pinpointed that difference. The door that led to
Kyger’s private quarters, which he had never seen open, stood
ajar now—painting an unfamiliar shadow across a section of
pavement. And in the center of the yard stood a flitter. Whether it
was the shop flyer he could not tell.
The open door and that waiting flyer were not all. There was an
atmosphere of sharp expectancy about the whole scene—as if
the stage awaited actors. Maybe the animals were sensitive to that
also, for there were only the most subdued sounds from the pens.
Again Troy smelled “trap” as if it were a tangible odor
in the air. But somehow he could not believe it was set for
him.
Kyger then? That fitted better. He had had hints of some
personal difficulty—perhaps even a knife feud—engulfing the merchant. And there was the Clan’s concern with
the ex-spacer, too. Troy Horan was very small fry indeed. This
suggested an operation on a much more important scale.
Prudence dictated his getting across that courtyard, into his
own bunk room, without any exploration—if he could make it
unobserved by what might hide out there. And what about Zul? The
little man had left with Kyger—but what if he had returned
separately? The yardmen? From what he could see, there was no
indication that there was any human anywhere in the store
block.
A flicker of movement, not in the courtyard but on the top of
one of the blocks of pens, drew Troy’s eyes. There was a
second such. Something small, dark, fluidly supple, had crossed a
patch of light, been followed by another such. Far too small to be
Zul—animals loose from some cage? But why on the roof coming
in? The shadows into which both had slipped were far too deep for
his sight to penetrate, and the speed with which they had
disappeared suggested they might already be far away from that
point.
A gathering—why did he think of that? Troy measured the
distance between him and the nearest cover. Then, with as much
speed as he could muster, he made that leap, stood listening once
more, his breath coming raspingly.
Another surge of shadow, drawn toward that half-open door of
Kyger’s. This moving, not with the slinking glide of the
patch on the roof, but in a quick, scuttling dash, again too
hurried for Troy to see clearly. But he was sure it whipped about
the edge of the door, went into the merchant’s private
quarters.
Troy made his own advancing rush. Then he saw round balls of
green turned up toward him from close to ground level, feral animal
eyes. The belt swung in his hand, his reaction to being so
startled. They were gone as another form went through the door.
His earlier alarm had been tinged with curiosity. Now there was
another emotion feeding it. Just as those shadows had gone to the
waiting door, so did he have to follow. He crossed the last few
feet and entered, somehow expecting an attack.
Here the sounds from the courtyard were muted. But there was
that which was not a sound, rather a thrumming in the blood, a
throb in the ears—less than audible sound, or more. He knew
of whistles, animal and bird calls, that sounded notes beyond the
human range of hearing. Yet he could feel this that he could not
hear, and it was an irritant, a disturbance that nourished fear.
But he could not turn his back upon it.
Troy groped his way forward, for there was no night ray on. Then
his foot touched a rising surface and he explored a stairway with
his hands. Step by step he climbed, the thick substance of the
footing soaking up any sound of his boots. The throb was beating
more heavily through his body as he went.
The stairway ended. He stood listening—and knew that no
longer was he alone, though no sound, not even that of a hurried
breath, betrayed whoever, or whatever, shared that darkness with
him.
Troy had no idea of the geography of the space in which he now
was, and there could not be any open window slits, for the dark was
complete. He kept stern rein on his imagination, which tended to
people this place with shapes that crept and slunk toward the
target—which was himself. On impulse he squatted on his
heels, marked off a foot or so on the belt he held, and swung it
from left to right at floor level. Sure of that much clear space,
he inched on to try the same maneuver again.
How long he might have taken to make the trip across the hall
Troy was never to know, for a sudden shaft of light speared
dazzlingly from right to left some feet away. And as his eyes
adjusted to that. Troy saw it issued from a panel door not quite
closed.
He was in a hallway from which three such doors issued, all of
them on his right. And it was the last one that showed the light.
No sound—but he could not retreat now. Someone—or
something—knew he was there, was waiting. And he had to face
it.
On his feet again, Troy moved lightly and swiftly to that panel.
His hand touched its surface—now he could look in, though he
was not sure the man in that room could see him.
Kyger sat there, not in the enveloping embrace of an eazi-rest,
but upright on a queer, backless, armless stool, his shoulders
against the wall. And between his hands was a cylinder perhaps a
foot in diameter, one end resting on the floor guarded by his
firmly planted boots, its top slightly below his chin.
No man could sit that quietly, not if he was conscious. Yet
Kyger’s eyes were open, staring—not at Troy as the
other first supposed, but beyond and through him, as if the younger
man had no existence. And that frozen stare moved Troy forward,
made him push open the panel and step within.
Kyger did not stir. Troy, tongue running across suddenly dry
lips, came on. It was an oddly bare room. There was Kyger on his
stool, gripping his cylinder. There was a series of small polished
cabinets, all closed and with plainly visible thumb locks, and that
was all.
Troy spoke and then wished he had not as his words echoed
hollowly. “Merchant Kyger—is there something
wrong?”
Kyger continued to stare and Troy at last knew the
truth—Kyger was a dead man. He whirled, seeking behind him
the one who had put on the light—to see nothing save a wall
on which there were patterned lines of red, black, and white laid
down in a map’s design. A map of Tikil, he realized as he
surveyed it, in which the open door panel had left a break in the
eastern section.
Purposefully Troy moved to the right of the seated man. He could
see no wound, no indication of any violence. Yet Kyger had not died
naturally—his position, this room, argued that. And what of
the thing or things that he had seen precede him through the
downstairs door?
Leaving the panel open for light, Troy went back into the hall,
pushed open both other doors. One gave on a bedchamber, the other
on a small lounge-diner, both empty.
He went back to Kyger’s room. And now, fronting him out of
nowhere, were those shadows—the black cat and its blue-gray
mate, the kinkajou, no longer an indifferent ball but very much
alert, the two foxes he could have sworn were safe in their cage in
the other building. It looked as if the full roll of Terran imports
to Korwar was before him now. And their lips were drawn back from
their teeth, the hair of the cats was roughened on their arched
backs, their united menace could be felt as a blow.
“No!” Oddly enough he answered that unvoiced rage
and fear with word and gesture, dropping the belt, holding his
hands up and palm out to them as if he faced another of his own
species.
The black cat relaxed first, pacing forward a paw’s length
or so, and Troy dropped on one knee. “No,” he repeated
as firmly but in a lower tone. Then he held out his hand as he had
seen Kyger do on the morning they had first uncrated the cats in
the courtyard.
A delicate sniff or two, and then sharp teeth closed on the back
of his wrist, not to hurt, he knew, but as if to seal some
agreement. Troy did not have a chance to learn more, for there was
a sound from below. Someone who had no reason to disguise his
coming was climbing the stairs.
Troy strode to the panel of the hall door. Then he knew that his
silhouette could be seen from below, and he ducked to one side. It
was the action of only a few seconds, but when he glanced at the
animals, they were gone. Where they had vanished to he could not
guess, but that they had their suspicions concerning the newcomer
he could deduce from that disappearance.
There was no such escape for him. Troy stepped back a little,
picked up his belt, and, with it ready in his hand, stood
waiting.
Zul came into the path of the light. He gave Troy a wide-eyed
stare, looked beyond to the motionless Kyger. Then, his lips pulled
tight against his teeth, just as the animals had snarled, he
launched himself at Troy, his knife out, a vicious streak of fire
in his hand.
Tikil at night, or at least during the early
hours of the night, was more crowded than by day. Horan called an
accommodation flitter for his crosstown journey to the Hunter
Headquarters, but he decided to use the roll walk on his return. He
was going toward it when Harse hailed him, just in front of the
building.
“You seek Rerne?”
“I brought the fussel, by Merchant Kyger’s
orders.” Troy was put on the defensive by the other’s
attitude. During their brief time together Rerne had never made him
conscious of the Dipple. With the other rangers Horan was ever
aware of his knifeless belt and the fact he was a planetless
man.
“There is a message,” Harse replied aloofly.
“Rerne wishes to speak with you—”
“But I was just told he is not here.”
“So he is elsewhere. Come!”
Troy was tempted to reply “no” to that curt order.
After all, he was not under contract to Rerne. Yet he could not
deny that he was interested to learn why Harse had been sent to
find him.
The other was as adept at threading a fast passage through the
crowds as he might have been in finding a path through the forests.
And he brought Troy not to any office or lounge, but to one of
those small eating places that sprang up overnight by public favor
and disappeared as quickly when some newer attraction drew the
fickle pleasure seekers.
“Fourth booth,” Harse said and left him.
Troy pushed his way in and discovered that his shop livery did
not make him conspicuous here. This café definitely catered to
subcitizens and the lower ranks of shop employees. Two of the
booths were curtained, signifying private parties. But there were
two men without feminine company in the one to which he had been
directed.
Rerne, wearing shop livery, sat with his back against the wall.
And with him was an older man in a dark tunic lacking any emblems
of rank, yet equipped with that indefinable aura of authority that
Troy recognized as the inborn assurance of a man who has held
responsibility from his early years.
“Horan—” Rerne uttered his name in what might
be a greeting, but more likely was an introduction for the
stranger’s benefit.
“Rogarkil.” Now the stranger nodded to Troy.
“You have taken permanent contract with Kyger?”
Rerne shot that question at him bluntly, even as he waved the
younger man to a seat.
“I will—tomorrow—” A subtle tone in the
other’s demand made him uneasy, put him on the
defensive—why, he could not have said.
“You are now under a short-term one?” That was
Rogarkil.
“That is so.”
“And if you should be offered employment
elsewhere?”
“I have given my word to Merchant Kyger. He would have to
agree to my going.”
Rogarkil smiled wryly. “There are always such
disadvantages when one deals with honorable men. And to deal with
dishonorable ones is to lose before one takes the first stride in a
race. So at this hour you are still Merchant Kyger’s
man?”
“I am.”
What did they want of him? This talk of honor and dishonor made
Troy uncomfortable. But Rerne did not give him time to speculate
about the meanings that might lie behind their fencing blades of
words.
“There are questions you can answer, which will in no way
break contract. For example: Is it not true that Merchant Kyger is
now in the process of importing a Terran animal known as a fox at
the express order of the Great Leader?”
“You yourself heard that order given, Gentle
Homo.”
“And he has imported other Terran animals?”
“As you say, Gentle Homo, he has imported other Terran
animals. This must be general knowledge, since the display of such
pets is the pleasure of those who buy them.”
“A pair of cats for the Gentle Fem San duk Var, a
kinkajou for Sattor Commander Di—”
“I am a cleaner of cages and do general labor for the
worthy merchant,” Troy returned stiffly. “I do not make
sales, nor do I see many of the great ones who buy.”
“But among those cages that you clean,” cut in
Rogarkil, “are doubtless those of some of these exotics. You
have seen some of them with your own eyes, young man?”
Troy kept strictly to the record. “I was with Subcitizen
Zul when he went to the port to accept delivery of the
cats—”
“And you met with some trouble that
morning—”
Troy looked slowly from one man to the other. “Gentle
Homos,” he said softly, “if I speak now to patrollers
not in uniform, I have the right to know that fact. There is still
law to protect a man in Tikil—even one from the
Dipple.”
Rogarkil grimaced. “Yes, you are entirely within your
rights, young man, to deliver such a counterthrust as that. No, we
are not patrollers—nor do we represent the law of Tikil. This
is a Clan matter. Do you understand what that means?”
“Even in the Dipple, Gentle Homo, men have ears and lips.
Yes, I know that the Clans are older than the city law, that they
are rumored to have powers even beyond those of the Council
Governor-General. But they are of the Clans and for the Clans. I am
of the Dipple and if I am to climb out of the Dipple, I must do so
under the laws of Tikil. Why you ask me these questions I do not
know, but I hold by contract rights. This much I will say—and
it is no more than you can learn from the patroller records—I
have seen the cats. And I took the kinkajou from the villa of
Sattor Commander Di. It had been frightened by rough handling
there. I have seen the foxes, which are now in the shop. Why should
these facts be of any importance?”
“That is what we are striving to learn,” Rogarkil
answered enigmatically. “You are right, Horan. Clan law does
not run in Tikil. But remember that it does run
elsewhere—”
“A threat—or a warning, Gentle Homo?”
“A warning. We have reason to believe that you walk on the
rim of a whirlpool, young man. Take good care that you do not leap
into its current.”
“That is all you have to ask me?”
Rogarkil waved his hand in dismissal. But Rerne arose as Troy
did.
“I will see Merchant Kyger.”
“Not tonight. The shop is closed.”
Both men eyed him now as if he had made some fateful
announcement.
“Why?”
“Kyger had an errand—”
Rerne turned to his companion, spoke a sharply accented sentence
in a language that was not Galbasic. Rogarkil asked Troy another
question: “Is not this foreign to your regular
routine?”
“Yes.”
“So—well, maybe Merchant Kyger’s personal
affairs are beginning to press him more acutely,” he
commented. “One cannot carry a knife in two quarrels and give
equal attention to both. But the foxes are still there?” He
turned to Troy. “And where is the kinkajou you took from
Di’s villa—also in the shop?”
Troy shrugged. “When I returned from the Wild, it was gone
from the cage room. Perhaps it was restored to the Sattor
Commander’s heirs. It is a very valuable asset of the
estate.”
“Kyger did not return it so,” Rerne stated with
finality. He was watching Troy narrowly now, coldly.
“It was gone from its cage.” Troy repeated the
part-truth stubbornly. He was not going to add to that when he did
not know the game they were playing—the nature of this
“whirlpool” in which he, too, could be trapped.
“The boy is right, of course,” Rogarkil said.
“Employed as casual labor, he would have no reason to know
more than he has noticed. And he is a man under contract, apart
from our problems. It is a pity this is so now, Horan. Under other
circumstances we might have been of mutual assistance to one
another. A rider of Norden is not too far removed in aspirations
and desires from a Hunter of Korwar.”
“There are no riders on Norden today,” Troy pointed
out. He was watching Rerne, and again it seemed to him that the
Hunter was two-minded, about to speak and then thinking better of
it. Instead he nodded and Troy took that gesture for one of
dismissal. He lifted his own hand in a small salute—one of
equality though he was not aware of that—and walked away from
the booth. Why was he gnawed by the feeling that he had just
slammed a door irrevocably, a door that might have opened on a new
world? There was an ache of disappointment in him that was like the
bite of an old unappeasable hunger.
He pushed through the crowds, hardly noticing those about him,
made his way back to the shop and the side entrance into the
courtyard. Slapping his hand against the signal plate, he waited
for the night yardman to activate the open beam for him. But
instead, at that touch from his open palm, the panel swung inward
and he was looking down the short covered way, a way that was
unnaturally dim as if the usual night-radiance bars there had been
set at least two notches lower than was normal.
Troy’s stunner was in the bunk room. He was unarmed, and
he had no intention of walking that courtyard without some form of
defense. The door had no right to be open; the dimmed lights
underlined that silent warning. He could well be facing a trap.
Now he unfastened the polished silver buckles of his belt. The
strip of metal-encrusted leather was the only thing on him that
could serve as a weapon. With one end grasped tightly in his fist,
the length ready to use as a lash, he edged along the wall of the
passage, listening to catch any sound from the courtyard
beyond.
The mild complaints of the animals penned there could cover an
attack. But from whom and for what purpose? Troy reached the end of
the passage, flattened his body against the wall just inside the
entrance, and surveyed the open. There was something wrong about
the south side—
Then he pinpointed that difference. The door that led to
Kyger’s private quarters, which he had never seen open, stood
ajar now—painting an unfamiliar shadow across a section of
pavement. And in the center of the yard stood a flitter. Whether it
was the shop flyer he could not tell.
The open door and that waiting flyer were not all. There was an
atmosphere of sharp expectancy about the whole scene—as if
the stage awaited actors. Maybe the animals were sensitive to that
also, for there were only the most subdued sounds from the pens.
Again Troy smelled “trap” as if it were a tangible odor
in the air. But somehow he could not believe it was set for
him.
Kyger then? That fitted better. He had had hints of some
personal difficulty—perhaps even a knife feud—engulfing the merchant. And there was the Clan’s concern with
the ex-spacer, too. Troy Horan was very small fry indeed. This
suggested an operation on a much more important scale.
Prudence dictated his getting across that courtyard, into his
own bunk room, without any exploration—if he could make it
unobserved by what might hide out there. And what about Zul? The
little man had left with Kyger—but what if he had returned
separately? The yardmen? From what he could see, there was no
indication that there was any human anywhere in the store
block.
A flicker of movement, not in the courtyard but on the top of
one of the blocks of pens, drew Troy’s eyes. There was a
second such. Something small, dark, fluidly supple, had crossed a
patch of light, been followed by another such. Far too small to be
Zul—animals loose from some cage? But why on the roof coming
in? The shadows into which both had slipped were far too deep for
his sight to penetrate, and the speed with which they had
disappeared suggested they might already be far away from that
point.
A gathering—why did he think of that? Troy measured the
distance between him and the nearest cover. Then, with as much
speed as he could muster, he made that leap, stood listening once
more, his breath coming raspingly.
Another surge of shadow, drawn toward that half-open door of
Kyger’s. This moving, not with the slinking glide of the
patch on the roof, but in a quick, scuttling dash, again too
hurried for Troy to see clearly. But he was sure it whipped about
the edge of the door, went into the merchant’s private
quarters.
Troy made his own advancing rush. Then he saw round balls of
green turned up toward him from close to ground level, feral animal
eyes. The belt swung in his hand, his reaction to being so
startled. They were gone as another form went through the door.
His earlier alarm had been tinged with curiosity. Now there was
another emotion feeding it. Just as those shadows had gone to the
waiting door, so did he have to follow. He crossed the last few
feet and entered, somehow expecting an attack.
Here the sounds from the courtyard were muted. But there was
that which was not a sound, rather a thrumming in the blood, a
throb in the ears—less than audible sound, or more. He knew
of whistles, animal and bird calls, that sounded notes beyond the
human range of hearing. Yet he could feel this that he could not
hear, and it was an irritant, a disturbance that nourished fear.
But he could not turn his back upon it.
Troy groped his way forward, for there was no night ray on. Then
his foot touched a rising surface and he explored a stairway with
his hands. Step by step he climbed, the thick substance of the
footing soaking up any sound of his boots. The throb was beating
more heavily through his body as he went.
The stairway ended. He stood listening—and knew that no
longer was he alone, though no sound, not even that of a hurried
breath, betrayed whoever, or whatever, shared that darkness with
him.
Troy had no idea of the geography of the space in which he now
was, and there could not be any open window slits, for the dark was
complete. He kept stern rein on his imagination, which tended to
people this place with shapes that crept and slunk toward the
target—which was himself. On impulse he squatted on his
heels, marked off a foot or so on the belt he held, and swung it
from left to right at floor level. Sure of that much clear space,
he inched on to try the same maneuver again.
How long he might have taken to make the trip across the hall
Troy was never to know, for a sudden shaft of light speared
dazzlingly from right to left some feet away. And as his eyes
adjusted to that. Troy saw it issued from a panel door not quite
closed.
He was in a hallway from which three such doors issued, all of
them on his right. And it was the last one that showed the light.
No sound—but he could not retreat now. Someone—or
something—knew he was there, was waiting. And he had to face
it.
On his feet again, Troy moved lightly and swiftly to that panel.
His hand touched its surface—now he could look in, though he
was not sure the man in that room could see him.
Kyger sat there, not in the enveloping embrace of an eazi-rest,
but upright on a queer, backless, armless stool, his shoulders
against the wall. And between his hands was a cylinder perhaps a
foot in diameter, one end resting on the floor guarded by his
firmly planted boots, its top slightly below his chin.
No man could sit that quietly, not if he was conscious. Yet
Kyger’s eyes were open, staring—not at Troy as the
other first supposed, but beyond and through him, as if the younger
man had no existence. And that frozen stare moved Troy forward,
made him push open the panel and step within.
Kyger did not stir. Troy, tongue running across suddenly dry
lips, came on. It was an oddly bare room. There was Kyger on his
stool, gripping his cylinder. There was a series of small polished
cabinets, all closed and with plainly visible thumb locks, and that
was all.
Troy spoke and then wished he had not as his words echoed
hollowly. “Merchant Kyger—is there something
wrong?”
Kyger continued to stare and Troy at last knew the
truth—Kyger was a dead man. He whirled, seeking behind him
the one who had put on the light—to see nothing save a wall
on which there were patterned lines of red, black, and white laid
down in a map’s design. A map of Tikil, he realized as he
surveyed it, in which the open door panel had left a break in the
eastern section.
Purposefully Troy moved to the right of the seated man. He could
see no wound, no indication of any violence. Yet Kyger had not died
naturally—his position, this room, argued that. And what of
the thing or things that he had seen precede him through the
downstairs door?
Leaving the panel open for light, Troy went back into the hall,
pushed open both other doors. One gave on a bedchamber, the other
on a small lounge-diner, both empty.
He went back to Kyger’s room. And now, fronting him out of
nowhere, were those shadows—the black cat and its blue-gray
mate, the kinkajou, no longer an indifferent ball but very much
alert, the two foxes he could have sworn were safe in their cage in
the other building. It looked as if the full roll of Terran imports
to Korwar was before him now. And their lips were drawn back from
their teeth, the hair of the cats was roughened on their arched
backs, their united menace could be felt as a blow.
“No!” Oddly enough he answered that unvoiced rage
and fear with word and gesture, dropping the belt, holding his
hands up and palm out to them as if he faced another of his own
species.
The black cat relaxed first, pacing forward a paw’s length
or so, and Troy dropped on one knee. “No,” he repeated
as firmly but in a lower tone. Then he held out his hand as he had
seen Kyger do on the morning they had first uncrated the cats in
the courtyard.
A delicate sniff or two, and then sharp teeth closed on the back
of his wrist, not to hurt, he knew, but as if to seal some
agreement. Troy did not have a chance to learn more, for there was
a sound from below. Someone who had no reason to disguise his
coming was climbing the stairs.
Troy strode to the panel of the hall door. Then he knew that his
silhouette could be seen from below, and he ducked to one side. It
was the action of only a few seconds, but when he glanced at the
animals, they were gone. Where they had vanished to he could not
guess, but that they had their suspicions concerning the newcomer
he could deduce from that disappearance.
There was no such escape for him. Troy stepped back a little,
picked up his belt, and, with it ready in his hand, stood
waiting.
Zul came into the path of the light. He gave Troy a wide-eyed
stare, looked beyond to the motionless Kyger. Then, his lips pulled
tight against his teeth, just as the animals had snarled, he
launched himself at Troy, his knife out, a vicious streak of fire
in his hand.