Part 7 (1/2)

”That's news?” a

ked the tipstaff sardonically. He put his hand on the Herald s arm.' ”Only yesterday he gimme a blast when I brought him a mug of water he asked me for himself. An outrageous interruption, he called me, and he asked for the water himself. What do you think of that?”

”Terrible,” said Alen hastily. He broke away and caught up with the trader and the engineer at the entrance hall. Idlers and loungers were-staring at them as they headed for the waiting wagon.

”I wait!” the driver told them loudly. ”I wait long, much. You pay more, more?”

”We pay more,” said the trader. ”You start.”

The driver brought out a smoldering piece of punk, lit a pressure torch, lifted the barn-door section of the wagon's floor to expose the pottery turbine and preheated it with the torch. He pumped squeakily for minutes, spinning a flywheel with his other hand, before the rotor began to turn on its own. Down went the hatch, up onto the seats went the pa.s.sengers.

”The s.p.a.ceport,” said Alen. With a slate-pencil screech the driver engaged his planetary gear and they were off.

Through it all, blackbeard had ignored frantic muttered questions from Chief Elwon, who had wanted nothing to do with murder, especially of a judge. ”You sit up there,” growled the trader, ”and every so often you look around and see if

we're being followed. Don't alarm the driver. And if we get to the s.p.a.ceport and blast off without any trouble, keep your story to yourself.” He settled down in the back seat with Alen and maintained a gloomy silence. The young Herald was too much in awe of this stranger, so suddenly competent in a.s.sorted forms of violence, to question him.

They did get to the s.p.a.ceport without trouble, and found the crew hi the Customs shed, emptied of the gems by dealers with releases. They had built a fire for warmth.

”We wish to leave immediately,” said the trader, to the port officer. ”Can you change my Lyran currency?”

The officers began to sputter apologetically that it was late and the vault was sealed for the night-

”That's all right We'll change it on Vega. It'll get back to you. Call off your guards and unseal our s.h.i.+p.”

They followed the port officer to Starsong's dim bulk out on the field. The officer cracked the seal on her with his club in the light of a flaring pressure lamp held by one of the guards.

Alen was sweating hard through it all. As they started across the field he had seen what looked like two closely s.p.a.ced green stars low on the horizon towards town suddenly each jerk up and towards each other in minute arcs. The sema-. ph.o.r.e!

The signal officer in the port administration building would be watching too-but n.o.body on the field, preoccupied with the routine of departure, seemed to have noticed.

The lights nipped this way and that. Alen didn't know the code and bitterly regretted the lack. After some twenty signals the lights flipped to the ”rest” postion again as the port officer was droning out a set of take-off regulations: bearing, height above settled areas, permissible atomic fuels while in atmosphere-Alen saw somebody start across the field toward them from the administration building. The guards were leaning on then- long, competent looking weapons.

Alen inconspicuously detached himself from the group around Starsong and headed across the dark field to meet the approaching figure. Nearing it, he called out a low greeting in Lyran, using the noncom-to-officer military form.

”Sergeant,” said the signal officer quietly, ”go and draw off the men a few meters from the star-travelers. Tell them the

s.h.i.+p mustn't leave, that they're to cover the foreigners and shoot if-”

Alen stood dazedly over the limp body of the signal officer. And then he quickly hid the bludgeon again and strolled back to the s.h.i.+p, wondering whether he'd cracked the Lyran's skull.

The port was open by then and the crew filing in. He was last. ”Close it fast,” he told the trader. ”I had to-”

”I saw you,” grunted blackbeard. ”A semaph.o.r.e message?” He was working as he spoke, and the metal port closed.

”Astrogator and engineer, take over,” he told them.

”All hands to their bunks,” ordered Astrogator Hufner. ”Blast-off immediate.”

Alen took to his cubicle and strapped himself hi. Blast-ofi deafened him, rattled his bones and made him thoroughly sick as usual. After what seemed like several wretched hours, they were definitely s.p.a.ce-borne under smooth acceleration, and his nausea subsided.