Part 5 (2/2)

'Tru! C'mon, mate! Move, curse you! Throw up, do something, dammit!' The irony of trying to rouse his companion so that he could then be conscious when the Aann disruption beams scattered their component parts over the cosmos did not interrupt his movements.

Truzenzuzex began to stir feebly, the hissing from the breathing spicules below Bran's ministering hands pulsing raggedly and unevenly.

'Mmmfff! Ooooo! My friend, I hereby inform all and sundry that a blow on the cranium is decidedly not conducive to literate cognitation! A little lower and to the right, please, is where it itches. Alas, I fear I am in for a touch of the headache.'

He raised a tmehand slowly to his head and Bran could see where a loose bar of something bad struck hard after the body-field had lapsed. There was an ugly dark streak in the insect's azure exoskeleton. The thranx organism was exceptionally tough, but very vulnerable to deep cuts and punctures because of their open circulatory system. When their armour remained intact they were well-nigh invulnerable. Much more so than their human counterparts. The same blow probably would have crushed Bran's skull like eggsh.e.l.l. The great eyes turned to face him.

's.h.i.+p-brother, I notice mild precipitation at the corners of your oculars, differing in composition from the fluid which even yet is leaking from your bead. I know the meaning of such a production and a.s.sure you it is not necessary. Other than injury to my immaculate and irresistible beauty, I am quite all right ... I think.

'Incidentally, it occurs to me that we both have been alive entirely too long, As I appear to be at least momentarily incapacitated I would appreciate it if you would cease your face-raining, get back to your position, and find out just what the h.e.l.l is going on.'

Bran wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes. What Tru said was perfectly correct. He had been so absorbed in reviving the insect be bad failed to notice that by ail reasonable standards of warfare they should both have been dead several minutes now. The AAnn might be unimaginative fighters, but they were efficient. He scrambled back to his seat and flipped emergency power to the battle screen. What he saw there stunned his mind if not his voice.

'Oooo-woprehensible mouth-noises and tell me what's taking place? My eyes are not fully focused yet, but I can see that you are bouncing around in your seat in a manner that is m no way related to s.h.i.+p actions.'

Bran was too far gone to hear. The scene on the screen was correspondingly weak, but fully visible none the less. It resembled a ping-pong game being played in zero gravity by two high-speed computers. The AAnn force was in full retreat, or rather, the remainder of it was. The bright darts of Commonwealth stings.h.i.+ps were weaving in and out of the retreating pattern with characteristic unpredictability.

Occasionally a brief, terse flare would denote the spot where another s.h.i.+p had departed the plane of material existence. And a voice drifted somehow over the roaring, screaming babble on the communicator, a voice that could belong to no one but Major Gonzalez. Over and over and over it repeated the same essential fact in differing words.

'What happened what happened what happened what...?'

Bran at this time suffered his second injury of the action. He sprained a lattisimus, laughing.

It was all made very clear later, at the court-martial. The other members of the Task Force had seen one of their members break position and dive on the AAnn formation.' Their pilot-pairings had stood the resultant engagement as long as possible. Then they began to peel out and follow. Only the cruiser Altair bad taken no part in the battle. Her crew bad a hard time living it down, even though it wasn't their fault.

Not so much as a tree on the planet had been scorched.

The presiding officer at the trial was an elderly thranx general officer from the Hiveworld itself. His ramrod stiffness combined with fading exoskelelon and an acid voice to make him a formidable figure indeed. As for the majority of the Task Force, its members were exonerated of wrongdoing. It was ruled that they had acted within Commonwealth dictates in acting 'under a justifiable circ.u.mstance where an act of violence against Commonwealth or Church property or persons shall be met with a SI force necessary to negate the effects of such violence. This provision was ruled to have taken effect when the AAnn s.h.i.+ps had engaged stings.h.i.+p number twenty-five in combat. That s.h.i.+p number twenty-five had provoked the encounter was a point that the court would 'take under careful study ... at length.'

Ensigns Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzu of the Zex were ordered stripped of all rank and dismissed from the service. As a preliminary, however, they were to be awarded the Church Order of Merit, one star cl.u.s.ter. This was done. Unofficially, each was also presented with a scroll on which those citizens of the colony-planet known as Goodhunting had inscribed their names and thanks ... all two hundred and mnety-five thousand of them.

Major Julio Gonzalez was promoted to commander and transferred immediately to a quiet desk post in an obscure system populated by semi-inteiligent amphibians.

After first being formally inducted into his s.h.i.+p-brother's clan, the Zex, Bran had entered the Church and had become deeply absorbed in the Chancellory of Alien Sociology, winning degrees and honours there.

Truzenzuzex remained on his home planet of Willow-Wane and resumed his preservice studies in psychology and theoretical history. The t.i.tle of Eint was granted shortly after. Their interests converged independently until both were immersed in the study of the ancient Tar-Aiym civilization-empire. Ten years had pa.s.sed before they had remet, and they had been together ever since, an arrangement which neither had had cause to regret.

'Buy a winter suit, sir? The season is fast nearing, and the astrologers forecast cold and sleet. The finest Pyrrm pelts, good sir”

'Pas? No. No thank you, vendor.' The turnout to their little inn loomed just ahead, by the seller of prayer-bells.

Bran felt an uncommonly strong need of sleep.

Chapter Six.

Flinx returned to his apartment to set himself in order for the trip. On the way back from the inurb he had stopped at a shop he knew well and purchased a small s.h.i.+p-bag. It was of a type he'd often seen carried by crewmen at the port and would do equally as well for him. It was light, had a built-in sensor lock on the seal, and was well-nigh indestructible, They haggled formally over the price, finally settling on the sum of nine-six point twenty credits. He could probably have cut the price another credit, but was too occupied by thought of the trip, so much so that the vendor inquired as to his health.

At the apartment he wasn't too surprised to find that all his possessions of value or usefulness fit easily into the one bag. He felt only a slight twinge of regret. He looked around for something else to take, but the bed wouldn't fit, nor would the portikitchen, and he doubted there'd be a shortage of either on the s.h.i.+p anyway. Memories were stored comfortably elsewhere. He shouldered the bag and left the empty room.

The concierge looked at him warily as he prepared to leave her the keys. She was generally a good woman, but inordinately suspicious, in reply to her persistent questioning he said only that he was departing on a journey of some length and had no idea when he would return. No, he wasn't 'running from the law'. He could see that the woman was suffering from a malady known as tridee addiction, and her imagination had been drugged in proportion. Would she hold the room for his return? She would ...

for four months' rent, in advance if you please. He paid it rather than stand and argue. It took a large slice out of the hundred credits he'd made so recently, but he found that he was in a hurry to spend the money as quickly as possible.

He strolled out into the night. His mind considered sleep but his body, tense with the speed at which events had been moving around him, vehemently disagreed'. Sleep was impossible. And it was pleasant out. He moved out into the lights and noise, submerging himself in. the familiar frenzy of the marketplace.

He savoured the night-smells of the food crescent, the raucous hooting of the barkers and sellers and vendors, greeting those he knew and smiling wistfully at an occasional delicate face peeping out from the pastel lit windows of the less reputable saloons.

Sometimes he would spot an especially familiar face. Then he would saunter over and the two would chat amiably for a while, swapping the stones and gossip of which Flinx always had a. plentiful supply.

Then the rich trader or poor beggar would rub his red hair for luck and they'd part - this time, at least, for longer than the night.

If a jungle could be organized and taxed, it would be called Drallar.

He had walked nearly a mile when he noticed-the slight lightening of the western sky that signified the approach of first-fog (there being no true dawn on Moth). The time had run faster than expected. He should be at the port shortly, but there remained one last thing to do.

He turned sharply to his right and hurried down several alleys and backways he knew well. Nearer the centre of the marketplace, which was quieter at night than the outskirts, he came on a st.u.r.dy if small frame building, it advertised on its walls metal products of all kinds for sale. There was a combination lock, a relic, on the inside of the door, but he knew how to circ.u.mvent that. He was careful to close it quietly behind him.

It was dark in the little building but light seeped in around the open edges of the roof, admitting air but not thieves. He stole softly to a back room, not needing even the dim light. An old woman lay there, snoring softly on a simple but luxuriously blanketed bed. Her breathing was shallow but steady, and there was what might have been a knowing smile on the ancient face. That was nonsense, of course. He stood staring silently at the wrinkled parchment visage for several long moments. Then he bent. Gently s.h.i.+fting the well-combed white hair to one side he planted a single kiss on the bony cheek. The woman stirred but did not awaken. He backed out of the room as quietly as he had entered, remembering to lock the main door behind him.

Then be turned and set off at a brisk jog in the direction of the shuttleport, Pip dozing stonelike on one shoulder.

Chapter Seven.

The great port lay a considerable distance from the city, so that its noise, fumes, and bustling commerce would not interfere with the business of the people or the sleep of the king. It was too far to walk. He hailed aMeepah -beast rickshaw and the driver sent the fleet-footed creature racing for the port. The Meepahs were fast and could dodge jams of more modem traffic. It was a sporting way to travel, and the moist wind whistling past his face wiped away the slight vestiges of sleepiness which had begun to overtake him. As the animals were pure sprinters and good for only one long run an hour they were also expensive. They flew past slower vehicles and great hoverloaders bringing tons of goods to and from the port. As they had for centuries and doubtless would for centuries to come, the poor of Moth walked along the sides of the highway. There were none of the public moving walkways on Moth that could be found in profusion in the capitals of more civilized planets. Besides being expensive, the nomad populace tended to cut them up for the metal.

When he reached an area away from the bustling commercial pits that he thought would be close to the private docks, he paid off the driver, debarked, and hurried off into the great tubular buildings. He knew more than a little of the layout of the great port from his numerous trips here as a child. Where his interest in the place had sprung from he couldn't guess. Certainly not from Mother Mastiff! But ever since an early age he'd been fascinated by the port for the link it provided with other worlds and races. When he had been able to steal away from that watchful parental eye he'd come here, often walking the entire distance on short, unsteady legs. He'd sit for hours at the feet of grizzled old crewmen who chuckled at his interest and spun their even older tales of the void and the pinp.r.i.c.ks of life and consciousness scattered through it for his eager mind and the fawning attention he gave freely. There were times when he'd stay till after dark. Then he'd sneak ever so carefully home, always into the waiting, scolding arms of Mother Mastiff. But at the port he was all but mesmerized. His favourites bad been the stories of the interstellar freighters, those huge, balloonlike vessels that plied the distances between the inhabited worlds, transporting strange cargoes and stranger pa.s.sengers. Why sonny, they'd tell him, if'n it weren't fer the freighters, the hull d.a.m.n uneeverse 'ud collapse, 'an Chaos himself 'ud return t'rule!

Now maybe he'd have a chance to see one of those fabulous vessels in person.

A muted growl went audible behind him and he turned to see the bulky shape of a cargo shuttle leap s.p.a.ceward, trailing its familiar of tail cream and crimson. The sound-absorbing material in its pit was further abetted by the layered gla.s.s of the building itself in m.u.f.fling the scream of the rockets and ramjets.

It was a sight he'd seen many times before, but a little piece of him still seemed to go s.p.a.ceward with each flight. He hurried on searching for a dock steward.

Approximately every fifteen minutes a shuttle landed or took off from Drallar port. And it was by no means the only one on the planet. Some of the private ports managed by the lumbering companies were almost as big. The shuttles took out woods, wood products, furs, light metals, food-stuffs; brought in machinery, luxury goods, traders, andtouristas . There! Checking bales of plastic panels was the white and black checkered uniform of a steward. He hurried over.

The man took in Flinx's clothing, age, and s.h.i.+p-bag and balanced these factors against the obviously dangerous reptile coiled alertly now about the boy's shoulder. He debated whether or not to answer the brief question Flinx put to him. Another, senior steward pulled up on a scoot, slowed and stooped.

'Trouble, Prin?'

The steward looked gratefully to his superior. ”This ... person ... wishes direction to the House of Malaika's private docks.'

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