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Terran ships, there was an intimacy which the seniors led but did not
rigidly control, a sort of perpetual dance.
"Aye, foreseers," Lannawar rumbled, "yon was a strange orb and
glad I was to see the last of it. Yet somehow, I know not, ours was
never a lucky ship afterward. Nothing went ever wholly right, you
track me? Speaking naught against captain nor crew, I was glad for
transfer to theBedh-Ivrich. Her skipper was Runei the Wanderer, and
far did he take us on explores."
Tachwyr's tailtip jerked and he opened his mouth. Someone was
always around to keep a brake on Lannawar's gar-rulousness.
Flandry, who had sat half drowsing, surged to alertness. He beat
Tachwyr by a millisecond in exclaiming: "Runei? The same who is
now Fodaich on Starkad?"
"Why & aye, believe so, foreseer." Eyes squinched in the tattooed
face across the table. A green hand scratched the paunch where the
undress tunic bulged open. "Not as I know much. Heard naught of
Starkad ere they told me why you Terrans is come."
Flandry's mind went into such furious action that he felt each of the
several levels on which it was operating. He had to grab whatever lead
chance had offered him after so many fruitless days; he must fend off
Tachwyr's efforts to wrench the lead away from him, for a minute or
two anyhow; at the same time, he must maintain his role. (Decadent,
as Abrams had suggested, and this he had enjoyed living up to
whenever his escorts took him to some place of amusement. But not
fatuous; he had quickly seen that he'd get further if they respected
him a little and were not bored by his company. He was naïve, wide-
eyed, pathetically hoping to accomplish something for Mother Terra,
simultaneously impressed by what he saw here. In wry moments he
admitted to himself that this was hardly a faked character.) On lower
levels of consciousness, excitement opened the sensory floodgates.
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Click here to buy
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Once more he noticed the background. They sat, with a bench for
him, in a marble pergola intricately arabesqued and onion-domed.
Tankards of bitter ale stood before them. Merseian food and drink
were nourishing to a Terran, and often tasty. They had entered this
hilltop restaurant (which was also a shrine, run by the devotees of a
very ancient faith) for the view and for a rest after walking around in
Dalgorad. That community nestled below them, half hidden by
lambent flowers and deep-green fronds, a few small modern buildings
and many hollowed-out trees which had housed untold generations of
a civilized society. Past the airport lay a beach of red sand. An ocean
so blue it was nearly black cast breakers ashore; their booming
drifted faint to Flandry on a wind that smelled cinnamon. Korych
shone overhead with subtropical fierceness, but the moons Wythna
and Lythyr were discernible, like ghosts.
Interior sensations: muscles drawn tight in thighs and belly,
bloodbeat in the eardrums, chill in the palms. No feeling of excess
weight; Merseian gravity was only a few percent above Terra's.
Merseian air, water, biochemistry, animal and plant life, were close
parallels to what man had evolved among. By the standards of either
world, the other was beautiful.
Which made the two races enemies. They wanted the same kind of
real estate.
"So Runei himself was not concerned with the original missions to
Starkad?" Flandry asked.
"No, foreseer. We surveyed beyond Rigel." Lannawar reached for
his tankard.
"I imagine, though," Flandry prompted, "from time to time when
space explorers got together, as it might be in a tavern, you'd swap
yarns?"
"Aye, aye. What else? 'Cept when we was told to keep our hatches
dogged about where we'd been. Not easy, foreseer, believe you me 'tis
not, when you could outbrag the crew of 'em save 'tis a Naval secret."
"You must have heard a lot about the Betelgeuse region,
regardless."
Lannawar raised his tankard. Thereby he missed noticing
Tachwyr's frown. But he did break the thread, and the officer caught
the raveled end deftly.
"Are you really interested in anecdotes, Ensign? I fear that our
good yqan has nothing else to give you."
"Well, yes, Mei, I am interested in anything about the Betelgeuse
sector," Flandry said. "After all, it borders on our Empire. I've already
served there, on Starkad, and I daresay I will again. So I'd be grateful
for whatever you care to tell me."
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Click here to buy
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Lannawar came up for air. "If you yourself, Yqan, were never
there, perhaps you know someone who was. I ask for no secrets, of
course, only stories."
"Khr-r-r." Lannawar wiped foam off his chin. "Not many about. Not
many what have fared yonderways. They're either back in space, or
they've died. Was old Ralgo Tamuar, my barracks friend in training
days. He was there aplenty. How he could lie! But he retired to one of
the colonies, let me see now, which one?"
"Yqan Belgis." Tachwyr spoke quietly, with no special inflection,
but Lannawar stiffened. "I think best we leave this subject. The
Starkadian situation is an unfortunate one. We are trying to be
friends with our guest, and I hope we are succeeding, but to dwell on
the dispute makes a needless obstacle." To Flandry, with sardonicism:
"I trust the ensign agrees?"
"As you wish," the Terran mumbled.
Damn, damn, and damn to the power of hell! He'd been on a scent.
He could swear he'd been. He felt nauseated with frustration.
Some draughts of ale soothed him. He'd never been idiot enough to
imagine himself making any spectacular discoveries or pulling off any
dazzling coups on this junket. (Well, certain daydreams, but you
couldn't really count that.) What he had obtained now was a hint
which tended to confirm that the early Merseian expeditions to
Starkad had found a big and strange thing. As a result, secrecy had
come down like a candlesnuffer. Officers and crews who knew, or
might suspect, the truth were snatched from sight. Murdered? No,
surely not. The Merseians were not the antlike monsters which
Terran propaganda depicted. They'd never have come as far as this, or
be as dangerous as they were, had that been the case. To shut a
spacefarer's mouth, you reassigned him or retired him to an exile
which might well be comfortable and which he himself might never
realize was an exile.
Even for the post of Starkadian commandant, Brechdan had been
careful to pick an officer who knew nothing beforehand about his
post, and could not since have been told the hidden truth.
Why & aside from those exploratory personnel who no longer
counted, perhaps only half a dozen beings in the universe knew!
Obviously Tachwyr didn't. He and his fellows had simply been
ordered to keep Flandry off certain topics.
The Terran believed they were honest, most of them, in their
friendliness toward him and their expressed wish that today's discord
could be resolved. They were good chaps. He felt more akin to them [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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Terran ships, there was an intimacy which the seniors led but did not
rigidly control, a sort of perpetual dance.
"Aye, foreseers," Lannawar rumbled, "yon was a strange orb and
glad I was to see the last of it. Yet somehow, I know not, ours was
never a lucky ship afterward. Nothing went ever wholly right, you
track me? Speaking naught against captain nor crew, I was glad for
transfer to theBedh-Ivrich. Her skipper was Runei the Wanderer, and
far did he take us on explores."
Tachwyr's tailtip jerked and he opened his mouth. Someone was
always around to keep a brake on Lannawar's gar-rulousness.
Flandry, who had sat half drowsing, surged to alertness. He beat
Tachwyr by a millisecond in exclaiming: "Runei? The same who is
now Fodaich on Starkad?"
"Why & aye, believe so, foreseer." Eyes squinched in the tattooed
face across the table. A green hand scratched the paunch where the
undress tunic bulged open. "Not as I know much. Heard naught of
Starkad ere they told me why you Terrans is come."
Flandry's mind went into such furious action that he felt each of the
several levels on which it was operating. He had to grab whatever lead
chance had offered him after so many fruitless days; he must fend off
Tachwyr's efforts to wrench the lead away from him, for a minute or
two anyhow; at the same time, he must maintain his role. (Decadent,
as Abrams had suggested, and this he had enjoyed living up to
whenever his escorts took him to some place of amusement. But not
fatuous; he had quickly seen that he'd get further if they respected
him a little and were not bored by his company. He was naïve, wide-
eyed, pathetically hoping to accomplish something for Mother Terra,
simultaneously impressed by what he saw here. In wry moments he
admitted to himself that this was hardly a faked character.) On lower
levels of consciousness, excitement opened the sensory floodgates.
a
a
T
T
n
n
s
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F
F
f
f
o
o
D
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r
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B
B
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Click here to buy
Click here to buy
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.
.
.
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A
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r r
Once more he noticed the background. They sat, with a bench for
him, in a marble pergola intricately arabesqued and onion-domed.
Tankards of bitter ale stood before them. Merseian food and drink
were nourishing to a Terran, and often tasty. They had entered this
hilltop restaurant (which was also a shrine, run by the devotees of a
very ancient faith) for the view and for a rest after walking around in
Dalgorad. That community nestled below them, half hidden by
lambent flowers and deep-green fronds, a few small modern buildings
and many hollowed-out trees which had housed untold generations of
a civilized society. Past the airport lay a beach of red sand. An ocean
so blue it was nearly black cast breakers ashore; their booming
drifted faint to Flandry on a wind that smelled cinnamon. Korych
shone overhead with subtropical fierceness, but the moons Wythna
and Lythyr were discernible, like ghosts.
Interior sensations: muscles drawn tight in thighs and belly,
bloodbeat in the eardrums, chill in the palms. No feeling of excess
weight; Merseian gravity was only a few percent above Terra's.
Merseian air, water, biochemistry, animal and plant life, were close
parallels to what man had evolved among. By the standards of either
world, the other was beautiful.
Which made the two races enemies. They wanted the same kind of
real estate.
"So Runei himself was not concerned with the original missions to
Starkad?" Flandry asked.
"No, foreseer. We surveyed beyond Rigel." Lannawar reached for
his tankard.
"I imagine, though," Flandry prompted, "from time to time when
space explorers got together, as it might be in a tavern, you'd swap
yarns?"
"Aye, aye. What else? 'Cept when we was told to keep our hatches
dogged about where we'd been. Not easy, foreseer, believe you me 'tis
not, when you could outbrag the crew of 'em save 'tis a Naval secret."
"You must have heard a lot about the Betelgeuse region,
regardless."
Lannawar raised his tankard. Thereby he missed noticing
Tachwyr's frown. But he did break the thread, and the officer caught
the raveled end deftly.
"Are you really interested in anecdotes, Ensign? I fear that our
good yqan has nothing else to give you."
"Well, yes, Mei, I am interested in anything about the Betelgeuse
sector," Flandry said. "After all, it borders on our Empire. I've already
served there, on Starkad, and I daresay I will again. So I'd be grateful
for whatever you care to tell me."
a
a
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T
n
n
s
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F
f
f
o
o
D
D
r
r
P
P
m
m
Y
Y
e
e
Y
Y
r
r
B
B
2
2
.
.
B
B
A
A
Click here to buy
Click here to buy
w
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A
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r r
Lannawar came up for air. "If you yourself, Yqan, were never
there, perhaps you know someone who was. I ask for no secrets, of
course, only stories."
"Khr-r-r." Lannawar wiped foam off his chin. "Not many about. Not
many what have fared yonderways. They're either back in space, or
they've died. Was old Ralgo Tamuar, my barracks friend in training
days. He was there aplenty. How he could lie! But he retired to one of
the colonies, let me see now, which one?"
"Yqan Belgis." Tachwyr spoke quietly, with no special inflection,
but Lannawar stiffened. "I think best we leave this subject. The
Starkadian situation is an unfortunate one. We are trying to be
friends with our guest, and I hope we are succeeding, but to dwell on
the dispute makes a needless obstacle." To Flandry, with sardonicism:
"I trust the ensign agrees?"
"As you wish," the Terran mumbled.
Damn, damn, and damn to the power of hell! He'd been on a scent.
He could swear he'd been. He felt nauseated with frustration.
Some draughts of ale soothed him. He'd never been idiot enough to
imagine himself making any spectacular discoveries or pulling off any
dazzling coups on this junket. (Well, certain daydreams, but you
couldn't really count that.) What he had obtained now was a hint
which tended to confirm that the early Merseian expeditions to
Starkad had found a big and strange thing. As a result, secrecy had
come down like a candlesnuffer. Officers and crews who knew, or
might suspect, the truth were snatched from sight. Murdered? No,
surely not. The Merseians were not the antlike monsters which
Terran propaganda depicted. They'd never have come as far as this, or
be as dangerous as they were, had that been the case. To shut a
spacefarer's mouth, you reassigned him or retired him to an exile
which might well be comfortable and which he himself might never
realize was an exile.
Even for the post of Starkadian commandant, Brechdan had been
careful to pick an officer who knew nothing beforehand about his
post, and could not since have been told the hidden truth.
Why & aside from those exploratory personnel who no longer
counted, perhaps only half a dozen beings in the universe knew!
Obviously Tachwyr didn't. He and his fellows had simply been
ordered to keep Flandry off certain topics.
The Terran believed they were honest, most of them, in their
friendliness toward him and their expressed wish that today's discord
could be resolved. They were good chaps. He felt more akin to them [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]