"Seri," repeated Boker. "And the White Sun?"
"Why not?"
"But Seri first."
"Naturally. If I don't stop him it'll be because I'm dead, in which case I won't have any use for a million credits." Kettrick found suddenly that he was shouting in a most melodramatic and undignified fashion. "He made a jackass out of me! A complete jackass. He murdered Khitu. He tried to murder me and Chai. Now he's on his way to murder a solar system, using my friends to help him, using my name to ruin, poison…" He was running out of breath. "Anyway, after I'm through with Seri, I might as well go out and see the Krinn. Why not?"
"You're an optimist, Johnny," Boker said. "Or maybe just a jackass. You talk about stopping Seri, as though that's an end to it. That's like saying you'll just take one little step out the airlock door. Seri's only a piece of it. You don't know how big the whole thing is, how many people, how much force. You think you can handle all that? You think we can handle all that?"
Kettrick did not answer. It was Hurth who said, very unhappily, "It looks like we're stuck to try."
Boker looked at him. Then he looked at Glevan.
"It will be a worthy battle," Glevan said, and grinned, a grimace of frightening solemnity. "We'll lose, of course. But proudly. That's the thing."
"Sure," said Boker, and shook a drop of sweat off the end of his broad nose. "Sure, that's the thing. Well, and so. How do you see this, Johnny? How will it go?"
Kettrick swore. "I don't know any more than you do. All I know is that Seri has a piece of the thing and is taking it somewhere. Maybe he'll pick up more pieces along the way. Maybe if we could just catch up with Seri we could stop the whole thing by taking, or destroying, the pieces he has, assuming that each piece is vital to the operation of the whole." He started to pace again, restless with thinking, and Chai watched him from the corner where she sprawled and panted, her large eyes dark and troubled. "If we could catch up with him…Starbird's faster than Grellah, but miracles do happen…"
"Aye," said Glevan, "to some. Not to old, rusty, battered ships. They do not turn into space hawks."
He rose and left the bridgeroom.
"At Kirnanoc," said Kettrick, "there's an I–C office. We could get help there. We certainly could get help there."
Boker brightened. So did Hurth. "Yes." they said. "Of course."
"Well, then," said Kettrick. He sat down. Then he sprang up again. "What the devil's going on?"
The whine-drone-clack had changed pitch slightly. An unpleasant small quiver ran through the fabric of the ship. Boker sprang to his feet and roared into the intercom.
"Glevan! If you blow that unit, I'll hunt you down through all the halls of hell…!"
Glevan's voice came back muffled and booming. "I'm only trying to make a very little miracle, Boker. Don't you worry." He gave a triumphant cackle. "We're important men now. We can't afford to die."
Boker turned without a word and opened up a locker underneath the seat. In a padded honeycomb inside the locker were plastic cylinders. He took one out, uncapped it, drank from it, and passed it on.
They killed the thing between them and then gave up. They should have been drunk. Never, Kettrick thought, had men more needed to be drunk. They were still as sober as Chai.
The Doomstar was not that easily escaped, even in the mind.
And Larith. Was she part of that monstrousness?
He tried not to think of her. He did not have too much success.
Glevan achieved his little miracle, a very small one indeed. They came out of jump with their hearts in their throats and every eye on the radiation counters. They showed a normal reading. Thwayn's sun, older and redder and more tired than most of the Cluster stars, rolled heavily along as it always had, shaking its mane of fire with a sort of sad, diminished glory.
Grellah lumbered in toward the third world, a frosty planet all aglitter with the whiteness of snow.
12
Long before they landed it was obvious that Starbird was not there. There was now only one field on that whole planet, and the scanners pictured it windswept and empty. As Grellah settled down on her ragged tailfires, Kettrick thought he saw through the whipped clouds of dust and smoke the fresh scar of a similar landing. That was all.
They opened the airlock. Kettrick and Boker went outside and waited. Hurth and Glevan were already at work in Grellah's bowels. Once again Chai stretched her legs like a hound let free of the kennel. The wind was cold and clean, blowing off the southern snowfields.
Here in this vast equatorial basin it was still warm enough to support life. Herds could graze and crops could grow in the summertime, and the winters were not unbearable. There was game, and water, and the deepest river hardly ever froze. Kettrick walked about, looking at the white snowbanks left from the coming winter's first fall. He crushed a handful of it and tasted it, and felt a pang of recognition. Here and on Earth, it was the same.
He passed by the burned scat he thought he had seen in the scanner. It was there, the edges clear and fresh.
He went back to the ship. Boker was bundled up in heavy coveralls, not much liking the chill. The Cluster worlds tended to be mild. Even Chai was shivering a little in spite of her thick fur.
"If it was Starbird" Kettrick said, "we're close on her heels."
Boker nodded toward the low range of hills that screened the west. "Here comes our welcoming committee."
A line of riders mounted on shaggy, thick-legged beasts came at a shuffling trot out of the hills.
Boker drew a long breath and straightened his shoulders. "It's easy," he said. "Just act as though you never heard of the Doomstar."
"Don't work so hard at it," Kettrick muttered. "You couldn't look any guiltier."
He knew that his own manner must be just about as strained.
The riders came thumping up, powerfully built men in woollen tunics and trousers, with fur-lined boots on their feet and hooded coats on their backs, the coats open and the hoods thrown back because of the warmth of the day. They carried a primitive but quite adequate type of rifle slung across their backs, and in their belts were heavy pistols as well as the ever-useful skinning knives. They were a dark-skinned people, of a greenish cast, with much hair, generally of rusty red.
There was no shouting, no welcoming with open arms. These were men of dignity. They formed a crescent, about twenty strong, in front of the ship and simply sat there on their broad beasts, which breathed heavily and peered through shaggy forelocks. The men examined Kettrick and Boker as though possibly they had never seen them before.
Kettrick and Boker stood with arms folded and stared at a point above the riders' heads. When enough time had gone by to prove to anyone that the men of Thwayne were not impressed by ships or traders, nor in any way anxious to do business with them, one man detached himself from the crescent and rode forward.
"May the Frost King spare your flocks," he said, in his own harsh tongue.
"And may the Sun King warm your croplands," answered Kettrick formally, in the same tongue. Then he switched to lingua. "Hello, Flay."
"Johnny," said the man. His rusty heard so long, braided in two braids, and his hair was braided too, and coiled above his ears. He smiled, showing strong yellow teeth. "Johnny, I'll be damned! Hello, Boker." Then he looked at Chai. "What is that?"
"My friend," said Kettrick, "and not so thick-pelted as you, Flay!"
Flay looked doubtful. "Can your friend ride?"
"She can run."
Flay grunted. "Well, keep her off my hounds. Where's the rest of you?"