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STAR HUNTER
ANDRE NORTON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10036
Copyright, 1961, by Ace Books, Inc.
* * * * *
STAR HUNTER
I
Nahuatl's larger moon pursued the smaller, greenish globe of itscompanion across a cloudless sky in which the stars made a speckledpattern like the scales of a huge serpent coiled around a black bowl.Ras Hume paused at the border of scented spike-flowers on the topterrace of the Pleasure House to wonder why he thought of serpents. Heunderstood. Mankind's age-old hatred, brought from his native planetto the distant stars, was evil symbolized by a coil in a twisted,belly-path across the ground. And on Nahuatl, as well as a dozen otherworlds, Wass was the serpent.
A night wind was rising, stirring the exotic, half-dozen other worlds'foliage planted cunningly on the terrace to simulate the mystery of anoff-world jungle.
"Hume?" The inquiry seemed to come out of thin air over his head.
"Hume," he repeated his own name calmly.
A shaft of light brilliant enough to dazzle the eyes struck throughthe massed vegetation, revealing a path. Hume lingered for a moment,offering a counterstroke of indifference in what he had always knownwould be a test of wits. Wass was Veep of a shadowy empire, but thatwas apart from the world in which Ras Hume moved.
He strode deliberately down the corridor illuminated between leaf andblossom walls. A grotesque lump of crystal leered at him from theheart of a tharsala lilly bed. The intricate carving of a devilishnonhuman set of features was a work of alien art. Tendrils of smokecurled from the thing's flat nostrils, and Hume sniffed the scent of anarcotic he recognized. He smiled. Such measures might soften up theusual civ Wass interviewed here. But a star pilot turned out-hunterwas immunized against such mind clouding.
There was a door, the lintel and posts of which had more carving, butthis time Terran, Hume thought--old, very old. Perhaps rumor wasright, Milfors Wass might be truly native Terran and not second,third, nor fourth generation star stock as most of those who reachedNahuatl were.
The room beyond that elaborately carved entrance was, in contrast,severe. Rust walls were bare of any pattern save an oval disk ofcloudy golden shimmer behind the chair at the long table of solid rubyrock from Nahuatl's poisonous sister planet of Xipe. Without a pausehe walked to the chair and seated himself without invitation to waitin the empty room.
That clouded oval might be a com device. Hume refused to look at itafter his first glance. This interview was to be person to person. IfWass did not appear within a reasonable length of time he would leave.
And Hume hoped to any unseen watcher he presented the appearance of aman not impressed by stage settings. After all he was now in theseller's space boots, and it was a seller's market.
Ras Hume rested his right hand on the table. Against the polished glowof the stone, the substance of it was flesh-tanned brown--a perfectmatch for his left. And the subtle difference between true flesh andfalse was no hindrance in the use of those fingers or their strength.Save that it had pushed him out of command of a cargo-cum-liner andhurled him down from the pinnacle of a star pilot. There were bitterbrackets about his mouth, set there by that hand as deeply as ifcarved with a knife.
It had been four years--planet time--since he had lifted the RigalRover from the launch pad on Sargon Two. He had suspected it might bea tricky voyage with young Tors Wazalitz, who was a third owner of theKogan-Bors-Wazalitz line, and a Gratz chewer. But one did not arguewith the owners, except when the safety of the ship was concerned. TheRigal Rover had made a crash landing at Alexbut, and a badly injuredpilot had brought her in by will, hope and a faith he speedily lost.
He received a plasta-hand, the best the medical center could supplyand a pension for life, forced by the public acclaim for a man who hadsaved ships and lives. Then--the sack because a crazed Tors Wazalitzwas dead. They dared not try to stick Hume with a murder charge; thevoyage record tapes had been shot straight through to the PatrolCouncil, and the evidence on those could be neither faked nor tamperedwith. They could not give him a quick punishment, but they could tryto arrange a slow death. The word had gone out that Hume was off pilotboards. They had tried to keep him out of space.
And they might have done it, too, had he been the usual type of pilot,knowing only his trade. But some odd streak of restlessness had alwaysled him to apply for the rim runs, the very first flights to newlyopened worlds. Outside of the survey men, there were few qualifiedpilots of his seniority who possessed such a wide and varied knowledgeof the galactic frontiers.
So when he learned that the ships' boards were irrevocably closed tohim, Hume had signed up with the Out-Hunters' Guild. There was a vastdifference between lifting a liner from a launching pad and guidingciv hunters to worlds surveyed and staked out for their trips into thewild. Hume relished the exploration part--he disliked theleading-by-the-hand of nine-tenths of the Guild's clients.
But if he had not been in the Guild service he would never have madethat find on Jumala. That lucky, lucky find! Hume's plasta-fleshfingers curved, their nails drew across the red surface of the table.And where was Wass? He was about to rise and go when the golden ovalon the wall smoked, its substance thinning to a mist as a man steppedthrough to the floor.
The newcomer was small compared to the former pilot, but he hadbreadth of shoulder which made the upper part of his torso overbalancehis thin hips and legs. He was dressed most conservatively except fora jeweled plaque resting on the tightly stretched gray silk of hisupper tunic at heart level. Unlike Hume he wore no visible arms belt,but the other did not doubt that there were a number of devicesconcealed in that room to counter the efforts of any assassin.
The man from the mirror spoke with a flat, toneless voice. His blackhair had been shaven well above his ears, the locks left on top of hisskull trained into a kind of bird's crest. As Hume, his visible areasof flesh were deeply browned, but by nature rather than exposure tospace, the pilot guessed. His features were harsh, with a prominentnose, a back-slanting forehead, eyes dark, long and large, with heavylids.
"Now--" He spread both his hands, palm down and flat on the table, agesture Hume found himself for some unknown reason copying. "You havea proposition?"
But the pilot was not to be hurried, any more than he was to beinfluenced by Wass' stage-settings.
"I have an idea," he corrected.
"There are many ideas." Wass leaned back in his chair, but he did notremove his hands from the table. "Perhaps one in a thousand is thekernel of something useful. For the rest, there is no need to troublea man."
"Agreed," Hume returned evenly. "But that one idea in a thousand canalso pay off in odds of a million to one, when and if a man has it."
"And you have such a one?"
"I have such a one." It was Hume's role now to impress the other byhis unshakable confidence. He had studied all the possibilities. Wasswas the right man, perhaps the only partner he could find. But Wassmust not know that.
"On Jumala?" Wass returned.
If that stare and statement was intended to rattle Hume it was awasted shot. To discover that he had just returned from that frontierplanet required no ingenuity on the Veep's part.
; "Perhaps."
"Come, Out-Hunter Hume. We are both busy men, this is no time to playtricks with words and hints. Either you have made a find worth theattention of my organization or you have not. Let me be the judge."
This was it--the corner of no return. But Wass had his own code. TheVeep had established his tight control of his lawless organization byset rules, and one of them was, don't be greedy. Wass was nevergreedy, which is why the patrol had never been able to pull him down,and those who dealt with him did not talk. If you had a good thing,and Wass accepted temporary partnership, he kept his side of thebargain rigidly. You did the same--or regretted your stupidity.
"A claimant to the Kogan estate--that good enough for you?"
Wass showed no surprise. "And how would such a claimant be profitableto us?"
Hume appreciated that "us"; he had an in now. "If you supply theclaimant, surely you can claim a reward, in more ways than one."
"True. But one does not produce a claimant out of a Krusha dream. Theinvestigation for any such claim now would be made by a verity lab andno imposture will pass those tests. While a real claimant would notneed your help or mine."
"Depends upon the claimant."
"One you discovered on Jumala?"
"No." Hume shook his head slowly. "I found something else onJumala--an L-B from Largo Drift intact and in good shape. From theevidence now in existence it could have landed there with survivorsaboard."
"And the evidence of such survivors living on--that exists also?"
Hume shrugged, his plasta-flesh fingers flexed slightly. "It has beensix planet years, there is a forest where the L-B rests. No, noevidence at present."
"The Largo Drift," Wass repeated slowly, "carrying, among others,Gentlefem Tharlee Kogan Brodie."
"And her son Rynch Brodie, who was at the time of the Largo Drift'sdisappearance a boy of fourteen."
"You have indeed made a find." Wass gave that simple statement enoughemphasis to assure Hume he had won. His one-in-a-thousand idea hadbeen absorbed, was now being examined, amplified, broken down intodetails he could never have hoped to manage for himself, by the mostcunning criminal brain in at least five solar systems.
"Is there any hope of survivors?" Wass attacked the problem straighton.
"No evidence even of there being any passengers when the L-B planeted.Those are automatic and released a certain number of seconds after anaccident alarm. For what it's worth the hatch of this one was open. Itcould have brought in survivors. But I was on Jumala for three monthswith a full Guild crew and we found no sign of any castaways."
"So you propose--?"
"On the basis of my report Jumala has been put up for a safari choice.The L-B could well be innocently discovered by a client. Every oneknows the story with the case dragging through the Ten Sector-TerranCourts now. Gentlefem Brodie and her son might not have been news tenyears ago. Now, with a third of the Kogan-Bors-Wazalitz control goingto them, any find linked with the Largo Drift would gain full galacticcoverage."
"You have a choice of survivor? The Gentlefem?"
Hume shook his head. "The boy. He was bright, according to the storiessince, and he would have the survival manual from the ship to study.He could have grown up in the wilds of an unopened planet. To use awoman is too tricky."
"You are entirely right. But we shall require an extremely cleverimposter."
"I think not." Hume's cool glance met Wass'. "We only need a youth ofthe proper general physical description and the use of a conditioner."
Wass' expression did not change, there was no sign that Hume's hinthad struck home. But when he replied there was a slight change in themonotone of his voice.
"You seem to know a great deal."
"I am a man who listens," Hume replied, "and I do not always discountrumor as mere fantasy."
"That is true. As one of the guild you would be interested in the rootof fact beneath the plant of fiction," Wass acknowledged. "You appearto have done some planning on your own."
"I have waited and watched for just such an opportunity as this," Humeanswered.
"Ah, yes. The Kogan-Bors-Wazalitz combine incurred your displeasure. Isee you are also a man who does not forget easily. And that, too, Iunderstand. It is a foible of my own, Out-Hunter. I neither forgetnor forgive my enemies, though I may seem to do so and time separatesthem from their past deeds for a space."
Hume accepted that warning--both must keep any bargain. Wass wassilent for a moment, as if to leave time for the thought to rootitself, then he spoke again.
"A youth with the proper physical qualifications. Have you any such inmind?"
"I think so." Hume was short.
"He will need certain memories; those take time to tape."
"Those dealing with Jumala, I can supply."
"Yes. You will have to provide a tape beginning with his arrival onthat world. For such family material as is necessary I shall haveready. An interesting project, even apart from its value to us. Thisis one to intrigue experts."
Expert psycho-techs--Wass had them. Men who had slipped over theborder of the law, had entered Wass' organization and prospered there.There were some techs crooked enough to enjoy such a project for itsown sake, indulging in forbidden experimentation. For a moment, butonly for a moment, something in Hume jibbed at the intent of carryingthrough his plan. Then he shrugged that tinge aside.
"How soon do you wish to move?"
"How long will preparation take?" Hume asked in return, for the secondtime battling a taste of concern.
"Three months, maybe four. There's research to be done and tapes to bemade."
"It will be six months probably before the Guild sets up a safari forJumala."
Wass smiled. "That need not worry us. When the time comes for asafari, there shall also be clients, impeccable clients, asking for itto be planned."
There would be, too, Hume knew. Wass' influence reached into placeswhere the Veep himself was totally unknown. Yes, he could count on anexcellent, well above suspicion, set of clients to discover RynchBrodie when the time came.
"I can deliver the boy tonight, or early tomorrow morning. Where?"
"You are sure of your selection?"
"He fulfills the requirements, the right age, general appearance. Aboy who will not be missed, who has no kin, no ties, and who willdrop out of sight without any questions to be asked."
"Very well. Get him at once. Deliver him here."
Wass swept one hand across the table surface. On the red of the stonethere glowed for seconds an address. Hume noted it, nodded. It was onein the center of the port town, one which could be visited at an oddhour without exciting any curiosity. He rose.
"He will be there."
"Tomorrow, at your convenience," Wass added, "you will come to thisplace." Again the palm moved and a second address showed on the table.
"There you will begin your tape for our use. It may take severalsessions."
"I'm ready. I still have the long report to make to the Guild, so thematerial is still available on my note tapes."
"Excellent. Out-Hunter Hume, I salute a new colleague." At last Wass'right hand came up from the table. "May we both have luck equal to ourindustry."
"Luck to equal our desires," Hume corrected him.
"A very telling phrase, Out-Hunter. Luck to equal our desires. Yes,let us both deserve that."