"Earl!" Claude shouted an invitation as he entered the long, bleak room. "Come and join me!"
The engineer sat slumped at one end of the bar, his broad, mottled face streaming with perspiration. One big hand was clamped around a tankard of fused sand. At his side Lin hovered, an attendant shadow. A straggle of men filled the rest of the place, most of them standing close to where Claude was sitting.
"Earl!" he shouted again. "Come and join me and my friends." His free hand thudded on the bar. "A drink for the handler!"
Dumarest ignored the foaming tankard the bartender slapped down before him. He said, "Claude, I want you back at the ship. The loading ramp isn't working."
"Why tell me?" The engineer emptied his tankard and reached for the one served to Dumarest. "The cargo's your job."
"And the ramp is yours. I'm not going to sweat because a fat, drunken slob is too lazy to do his work. Now get on your feet and get to it!"
Claude slowly rose from his stool, one big hand clenching the tankard. Thickly he said, "What did you call me?"
"A fat, drunken slob," said Lin. "I heard him."
"You stay out of this!" Dumarest didn't look at the stew shy;ard. Around him he heard the scuff of boots as men re shy;treated.
"A fat, drunken slob," said Claude softly. "A fat-"
His bulk belied his speed. He turned, his arm a blur as he smashed the edge of the tankard down on the counter, rising with a circle of jagged shards, thrusting them vicious shy;ly at Dumarest's face. Dumarest lifted his left hand, his palm smacking against the wrist, gripping, holding it firm- the broken tankard inches from his eyes. He could see the savage points, the little flecks of brightness in the fused sand, and thought of what the improvised weapon could do, what one similar to it had done on Aarn.
He twisted and, as the shattered tankard dropped to the floor, balled his right fist and struck at Claude's jaw.
"All right," he said to Lin as the engineer fell. "When he wakes up get him back to the ship." To the others stand shy;ing around he said, "You've helped him to drink his pay, now you can help him to do his work. I want six men to load the Moray. You six. Let's get on with it."
Nimino entered the hold as Dumarest was securing the last of the cargo. He stood by the open port, his slim figure silhouetted against the angry ball of the sun, the darkness of his skin merging with the darkness of shadow. Teeth and eyes caught reflected light and made touches of transient brilliance, fading gleams accentuated by the movements of his hand, the polish of his nails.
"I hear that you've been having a little trouble, Earl."
Dumarest lifted a crate and swung it into position. "Noth shy;ing that I would call trouble."
"No? Lin tells it differently. He is entranced by the man shy;ner in which you co-opted labor to move the cargo. And he is bemused by the speed of your movements. The way in which you caught Claude's wrist. To hear him relate the story is to believe that you moved far more quickly than is considered possible."
"Lin is young," said Dumarest.
"And the young tend to exaggerate." Nimino moved a lit shy;tle, resting his shoulder on the edge of the open port. "True, but the facts remain. Have you ever undergone specialized training? I ask because the school of Jengha Dal teaches a system by which the reflexes can be accelerated. Do you know of it?"
"No."
"Perhaps your formative years were spent on a world of excessive gravity," mused the navigator. "But no, your phys shy;ical development contradicts that supposition. As your strength contradicts the assumption that you are a common traveler who chooses to work a passage from fear of riding Low."
Dumarest stacked the final crate and turned to look at the navigator. "Did I say that?"
"Sheyan assumed it; but, of course, he was wrong. Those who travel Low have little body fat and less strength. The caskets enfeeble them. You are far from feeble."
"And you are too curious," said Dumarest flatly.
"Perhaps, my friend, but it is said that the path to knowledge lies through the asking of many questions. For example, I ask myself why a man such as you should have been in such a hurry to leave Aarn. For fear of a man? A woman? I think not and yet you chose to leave on a ship like this. Perhaps Fate was pressing at your heels, in which case a man has no choice. But, again, why on a ship like this? Your experience must have told you what the Moray is. A scavenger sweeping between close-set stars. Lin joined us, true, but he knew no better. Claude had no choice and Sheyan is snared in an economic trap."
"And you?"
Nimino shrugged. "An astrologer predicted that I should find great knowledge in a cloud of dust. The Web is such a cloud."
"And the knowledge?"
"Is still to come."
Some knowledge, perhaps, but the navigator would be learned in the ways of trading. And perhaps more. He could easily be a sensitive, a clairvoyant able to peer into the fu shy;ture, or a telepath with the skill of reading minds; or per shy;haps he could sense impending danger as an animal would sense.the approach of a hunter. Or he could simply be highly curious and inordinately suspicious.
"It will come," said Dumarest. "When the time is ripe. Until then it could be a good idea to concentrate on your books."
"You dislike my curiosity?"
"I dislike anything which seems to have no purpose," said Dumarest. "And I cannot understand why you should be interested in me."
"In the Web a man needs to know with whom he travels," said Nimino quietly. "A little you have shown of yourself. Not much, but a little. For example I now know that you are not easily cowed. That you are accustomed to violence. That your reflexes are amazingly fast and that you are looking for something. A planet named Earth. Well, wherever it is you will not find it in the Web. I would venture to guess that, by mischance or the workings of fate, you have found yourself in a blind alley. The Moray is not an easy ship to leave."
Not easy but neither was it hard; Dumarest could walk off now, but what then? Weeks and perhaps months of waiting stuck on this barely colonized world, exposed to anyone who wanted to find him, vulnerable if they should. He shrugged, trying to throw off the feeling which had fol shy;lowed him from world to world and was with him still. The sense that someone was at his back, watching, waiting to pounce. And it was not wholly a thing of imagination.
The dead man Yalung had spoken about. He had been a thief and Dumarest had stunned and tied him fast. Later he had found him dead and had gone immediately to the field. Luck had seemed to favor him when the handler had been murdered in the tavern but now he wasn't so sure.
Luck-or design?
And, if the latter, why?
"You are thinking, Earl," said Nimino breaking the shy silence. "What about? The cargo?"
Dumarest was willing to change the subject. "It's heavy."
"And valuable, despite what you are probably thinking. We traded the machine patterns for it and the buyer must have been satisfied to have delivered the goods so promptly." The navigator stepped deeper into the hold and kicked one of the crates. "Iron," he said. "Many of the inner worlds lack heavy metals and some of them need the oxide in order to provide trace-elements in the soil. We shall turn this load with profit. They are poor worlds, Earl. Starvation planets for the most part, colonized by mischance rather than intent. Surely you have come across such worlds before?"
Backward planets at the end of the line. Dead worlds without industry or work for transients, making it impossible for them to gather the cost of a Low passage.
"I've seen a few," said Dumarest. "They are bad places for a traveler to find."