Sverdlov leaned on the bar, one hand resting on a pistol butt, the other holding up his drink. I could wish it really were one of the upstairs girls expecting me, he thought. Do we need all this melodrama of codes, countersigns, and cell organization? He considered the seething of near-naked men in the room. A chess game, a card game, a dirty joke, an Indian wrestling match, a brag, a wheedle, an incipient fight: his own Krasnans! It hardly seemed possible that any of those ears could have been hired by the Protector and yet…
The landlord came back. “She’s here and ready for you,” he grinned. A couple of nearby men guffawed coarsely. Sverdlov tossed off his drink, lit one of the cheap cigars he favored, and pushed through to the stairs.
At the end of a third floor corridor he rapped on a door. A voice invited him in. The room beyond was small and drably furnished, but its window looked down a straight street to the town’s end and a sudden feathery splendor of rainbow trees. Lightning flimmered through the bright rain of Krasna. Sverdlov wondered scornfully if Earth had jungle and infinite promise on any doorstep.
He closed the door and nodded at the two men who sat waiting. He knew fat Li-Tsung; the gaunt Arabic-looking fellow was strange to him, and neither asked for an introduction.
Li-Tsung raised an eyebrow. Sverdlov said, “It is going well. They were having some new troubles — the aerospores were playing merry hell with the electrical insulation — but I think I worked out a solution. The Wetlanders are keeping our boys amply fed, and there is no indication anyone has betrayed them. Yet.”
The thin man asked, “This is the clandestine bomb factory?”
“No,” said Li-Tsung. “It is time you learned of these matters, especially when you are leaving the system today. This man has been helping direct something more important than small arms manufacture. They are tooling up out there to make interplanetary missiles.”
“What for?” answered the stranger. “Once the Fellowship has seized the mattercaster, it will be years before reinforcements can arrive from any other system. You’ll have time enough to build heavy armament then.” He glanced inquiringly at Sverdlov. Li-Tsung nodded. “In fact,” said the thin man, “my division is trying to so organize things that there will be no closer Protectorate forces than Earth itself. Simultaneous revolution on a dozen planets. Then it would be at least two decades before spaceships could reach Tau Ceti.”
“Ah,” grunted Sverdlov. He lowered his hairy body into a chair. His cigar jabbed at the thin man. “Have you ever thought the Earthlings are no fools? The mattercaster for the Tau Ceti System is up there on Moon Two. Sure. We seize it, or destroy it. But is it the only transceiver around?”
The thin man choked. Li-Tsung murmured, “This is not for the rank and file. There is enough awe of Earth already to hold the people back. But in point of fact, the Protector is an idiot if there is not at least one asteroid in some unlikely orbit, with a heavy-duty ‘caster mounted on it. We can expect the Navy in our skies within hours of the independence proclamation. We must be prepared to fight!”
“But—” said the thin man. “But this means it will take years more to make ready than I thought. I had hoped—”
“The Centaurians rebelled prematurely, forty years ago,” said Li-Tsung. “Let us never forget the lesson. Do you want to be lobotomized?”
There was silence for a while. Rain hammered on the roof. Down in the street, a couple of rangers just in from the Uplands were organizing an impromptu saurian fight.
“Well,” said Sverdlov at last. “I’d better not stay here.”
“Oh, but you should,” said Li-Tsung. “You are supposedly visiting a woman, do you remember?”
Sverdlov snorted impatience, but reached for the little chess set in his pouch. “Who’ll play me a quick game, then?”
“Are the bright lights that attractive?” asked Li-Tsung.
Sverdlov spoke an obscenity. “I’ve spent nearly my whole leave chasing through the bush and up into the Czar,” he said. “I’ll be off to Thovo — or worse yet, to Krimchak or Cupra or the Belt, Thovo has a settlement at least — for weeks. Months, perhaps! Let me relax a little first.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Li-Tsung, “your next berth has already been assigned, and it is not to any of those places. It is outsystem.” In his public persona, he was a minor official in the local branch of the Astronautical Guild.
“What?” Sverdlov cursed for a steady minute. “You mean I’m to be locked up for a month on some stinking ship in the middle of interstellar space, and—”
“Calmly, please, calmly. You won’t be standing a routine single-handed just-in-case watch. This will be rather more interesting. You will be on the XA463, the Southern Cross.”
Sverdlov considered. He had taken his turn on the stellar vessels, but had no interest in them: they were a chore, one of the less desirable aspects of the spaceman’s life. He had even been on duty when a new system was entered, but it had thrilled him not. Its planets turned out to be poisonous hells; he had finished his hitch and gone home before they even completed the transceiver station, the devil could drink his share of the celebration party.
“I don’t know which of them that would be,” he said.
“It is bound for Alpha Crucis. Or was. Several years ago, the photographs taken by its instruments were routinely roboanalyzed on Earth. There were discrepancies. Chiefly, some of the background stars were displaced, the Einstein effect of mass on light rays. A more careful study revealed there was a feeble source of long radio waves in that direction. They appear to be the dying gasp of a star.”
Since Sverdlov’s work involved him with the atomic nucleus, he could not help arguing: “I don’t think so. The dying gasp, as you put it, would be gravitational potential energy, released as radiation when a star’s own fires are all exhausted. But a thing so cold it only emits in the far radio frequencies… I’d say that was merely some kind of turbulence in what passes for an atmosphere. That the star isn’t just dying, it’s dead.”
“I don’t know,” shrugged Li-Tsung. “Perhaps no one does. This expedition will be to answer such questions. They gave up on Alpha Crucis for the time being and decelerated the ship toward this black star. It is arriving there now. The next personnel will take up an orbit and make the initial studies. You are the engineer.”
Sverdlov drew heavily on his cigar. “Why me?” he protested. “I’m an interplanetary man. Except for those interstellar tours, I’ve never even been out of the Tau Ceti System.”
“That may be one reason you were picked,” said Li-Tsung. “The Guild does not like its men too provincial in outlook.”
“Surely,” sneered Sverdlov. “We colonials can travel anywhere we please, except to Earth. Only our goods go to Earth without special permission.”
“You need not recruit us into the Fellowship of Independence,” said the thin man in a parched voice.
Sverdlov clamped teeth together and got out through stiff lips: “There will be Earthlings aboard, won’t there? It’s asking for trouble, to put me on the same ship as an Earthling.”
“You will be very polite and co-operative,” said Li-Tsung sharply. “There are other reasons for your assignment. I cannot say much, but you can guess that we have sympathizers, even members, in the Guild… on a higher level than space-hand! It is possible that something of potential military value will be learned from the dark star. Who knows? Something about force fields or — Use your own imagination. It can do no harm to have a Fellowship man on the Cross. It may do some good. You will report to me when you return.”