The Hand of Zei
L. Sprague de Camp
CHAPTER ONE
On a fine clear morning, the sun rose redly over the rim of the Banjao Sea. The three moons of Krishna, which—as happens but seldom on that planet—were all in opposition to the sun at once, slipped one by one below the western horizon.
The rising sun, which the Krishnans call Roqir and the Earthmen call Tau Ceti, cast its ruddy rays slantwise across a vast floating swamp. Near the northern margin of this marine morass, these rays picked out a movement. A small ship crept eastward along the ragged edge of the swamp, where the floating continent of terpahla sea vine frayed out into streamers and floating islands.
A high-peaked, triangular lateen sail, barely filled by the faint dawn breeze from the north, flew from the single mast. To speed the little craft along, seven heavy-shouldered Krishnans sat in a row down each side of the deck, each man heaving on an oar. At the stern a stocky, gnarled old Krish-nan, looking like some barnacled sea monster, gripped the tiller. A pair of staring eyes were painted upon the bow; while, across the transom of the stern, a row of hooked characters gave the ship's name as Shambor.
Driven by its sail and its fourteen oars, the Shambor forged ahead into the sunrise, now and then altering its course to dodge a patch of terpahla. After each swerve, however, the steersman swung his vessel back towards a single objective: a primitive seagoing raft, with a tattered sail flapping feebly in the faint breeze. This derelict floated awash a few bowshots ahead.
Two persons lay prone on the rotting planks of this craft, peering towards the approaching ship from under their hands. At first sight they looked like Krishnans, a man and a woman. That is, they were of much the same size and shape as Earthmen, but with minor differences.
Thus their skins had a faint olive-greenish tinge, and the woman's dark hair was decidedly green. The man's head, however, was shaven, although a coarse bronze fuzz had begun to sprout from his scalp. Their ears were larger than those of Terrans, rising to points that gave them an elfin look. From the forehead of each, just above the inner ends of the eyebrows, rose a pair of the feathery antennae, like extra eyebrows, which served Krishnans as organs of smell.
The woman was young, tall, and superbly proportioned, with dark eyes and a prominent aquiline nose. She wore only the remains of a gown of gauze, shortened to knee-length by pulling up through her girdle. The garment, however, was so tattered that it was hardly better than none at all. The right shoulder strap had parted, exposing more of the girl's beauty than many Earthmen would consider seemly. Her bare feet had been chafed raw in places.
The man was tall and muscular, although his large-boned form, with knobby joints and oversized hands and feet, would not have been deemed a thing of beauty. He wore a stained and faded suit of pale blue, with short baggy breeches and a jacket with silver buttons. Thin leather boots rose to his calves. Beside him, on the deck, lay a dented ornamental helmet of thin silver, from which sprouted a pair of batlike silver wings.
The costume was, in fact, the uniform of the Mejrou Qurardena, which may be translated as Reliable Express Company. In this disguise, the man had sought to enter the Sunqar—the floating swamp—and snatch away two persons whom the pirates of that sinister place held captive. He had succeeded with one, the girl beside him.
Also on the planks of the raft lay four boards, a little over six feet long and whittled into crude skis, together with the ropes that had served as lashings and the oars the fugitives had used as balancing poles. It was on these skis that the man and the woman had escaped the previous night from the settlement of the Morya Sunqaruma—the freebooters of the Sunqar. In all the many centuries of Krishnan history, nobody had ever before thought of using this method of passage over the otherwise impassable mat of terpahla vine.
The terpahla lay all around the raft: a tangle of brown seaweed upheld by grapelike clusters of purple bladders. Peering over the side, one could sometimes catch a flash of motion where the fondaqa, the large venomous eels of the Sunqar, pursued their prey.
The man, however, was not studying the sea life of the Sunqar. He was frowning towards the approaching ship, which showed a faint whitish triangle of sail above the swampy surface. Now and then he cast a glance to southward, towards the main body of the floating continent of terpahla. A vast congeries of derelict vessels broke the horizon in that direction. Here the beaked galleys of Dur and the tubby roundships of Jazmurian slowly rotted in the unbreakable grip of the vine.
Even the violent storms of the Krishnan subtropics could no more than ruffle the surface of the Sunqar. From time to time, however, the swamp heaved and bubbled with the terrible sea life of the planet, the most fell of which was the gvam or harpooner.
But no monsters now broke the sluggish surface. Here in the growing light reigned silence and haze and the stench of the strangling vine.
Here, also, rose the works of man. The Morya Sunqaruma had built a floating city of derelicts. They kept a passage clear from the margins of the vine to their settlement, whence from time to time they sallied forth in reconditioned derelicts, or ships made from the sounder timbers of such, to work their will upon the nations and mariners of the Triple Seas.
Now, as the man on the raft looked towards the settlement, faint plumes of blue smoke arose from the ramshackle cluster of improvised houseboats. Along with domestic doings, the Morya were beginning the day's run of janru—that amazing drug which, extracted from the terpahla and incorporated in perfumery, gave any woman, either Krishnan or Terran, what power she wished over any man. By devious routes the stuff was smuggled from the Sunqar to Earth, where it wrought much social havoc.
Looking back towards the approaching Shambor, the man on the raft muttered: "It's our ship, all right, but…"
"But what, O Snyol?" said the girl.
"Because, Zei darling, it shouldn't have that sail up. Anybody with a telescope could see the sail from the settlement. So either my boys are being stupid, or they're not my boys."
The man had spoken Gozashtandou, the common speech of the western shores of the Triple Seas. He spoke with a marked accent, which he asserted to be that of Nyamadze, the antarctic Krishnan land he claimed as his home. One skilled in such matters, however, would easily have recognized his dialect for that of an Earthman.
For the man was neither Snyol of Pleshch, an exiled officer and adventurer from cold Nyamadze, nor yet the expressman Gozzan, both of which he had at various times pretended to be. He was Dirk Cornelius Barnevelt, a native of New York State, United States of America, Terra. The points on his ears, the antennae on his brow, and the faint greenish flush to his skin were all artificial, wrought upon his person by the skill of the barber at Novorecife, the outpost on Krishna of the Viagens Interplanetarias.
Moreover, Barnevelt was an employee of the firm of Igor Shtain, Limited. He was in fact the ghost writer for the firm. The corporation included the explorer Shtain himself, who traveled in far places and brought back reels of data; Barnevelt, who composed articles and lectures about these travels; and an actor, made up to look like Shtain, who delivered the lectures. In this age of specialization, the firm also kept a xenologist, who told the others what to think about the data that the intrepid Shtain had gathered.
Zei said: "When yestereve the brabble broke forth upon the ship, you would fain have trussed an Earthman who dwelt among the Sunqaruma, tossed him into the treasure chest, and borne him forth. You recall the man—a stubby wight with wrinkled, ruddy face, blue eyes, and stiff gray hair, growing upon his upper lip as well as on his pate?"