A Scatter of Stardust (14 page)

The spider he had seen in tremendous magnification when Lefarge had passed it before the portrait.

Sympathetic magic some people would have called it, but Mark knew better. It had nothing to do with demons, incantations, ceremony, the mixing of esoteric brews, the exhortation of wizards and witches. It had nothing to do with mysterious powers with unpronounceable names. It was no more magical than hypnotism or dowsing for water. It was science, as yet a young and barely understood science, but a science just the same.

“You know what this is?” He looked at Sandra, ignoring Lefarge, who stood watchful beside the open refrigerator. “It belongs to a science which people are only just beginning to investigate. Paraphysical science. Already we know that the relationship of certain symbols and objects seem to have a special significance. Not strange, really, when you consider a printed circuit in a radio set. What else is that but the relationship of special symbols? Would you call a radio set magical, Sandra?”

“No.”

“Then why assume that this thing, because as yet we do not fully understand it, is magical?” He reached out to touch the board and heard the sharp hiss of in-drawn breath. Lefarge, eyes wide with fear, tensed where he stood. Mark gestured toward him. “Look at him, your magician, your wizard. Look how he trembles. Would a man, claiming to control infinite power, be afraid of a painted board — if he could do as he claimed?”

Lefarge made a choking sound.

“Why are you afraid?” Mark stared him in the face. The deep-set eyes glared back at him, foam appearing at the comers of the thin lips. The man was almost insane with hate. Or was it fear?

Mark smiled and, with slow deliberation, sliced off the pointed tip of Lefarge’s beard. He hesitated, the point of the dagger against the lobe of the other’s ear.

“Should I take a little blood, Lefarge? I might need it for future use, just as you anticipated a need when you obtained some of my blood and hair. Does Sandra mean so much to you that you had to impress her?” The point of the knife dug deeper, a spot of blood appeared. Mark wiped it away with the soft tuft of hair.

“Stay away from me, Lefarge,” he warned. “If you don’t I’ll show you what hexing really means.”

*

He stepped back, laughing as Lefarge ran from the room. Upstairs the sound of a slammed door echoed hollowly through the building. The wizard would be busy with his protective spells, Mark guessed, and said so. Sandra was not amused.

“What are you going to do with it, Mark?” She pointed toward the board.

“Keep it. Study it. Try to figure out just what it does and how it works, without any ridiculous appealing to demons. If Lefarge can use it, then so can I.”

“Are you sure?”

“Perhaps not.” He drew paper from his pocket, began to note down the exact positioning of the various objects. “A dowsing rod does not work for everyone, but dowsing still works. They even sell the rods as engineering equipment in order to locate underground pipes.” He finished his scribbling, put away the paper. “Lefarge can prosecute me for its return if he likes. Somehow I don’t think that he will.”

“No, Mark, he won’t prosecute.”

“Not with what he’s got upstairs, he won’t.” He stretched, feeling wholly comfortable for the first time since the party. It was good to feel warm, good not to have a blur in his sight It was even better to know that he had been right all along and that magic did not exist aside from the conviction of its devotees. Lefarge had stumbled on something, a fragment of workable science which he had totally misunderstood, giving the credit to unnamed demons rather than to unsuspected natural law. He said so, then noticed Sandra’s expression.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Mark. It’s Just that — ” She looked helplessly at him. “It’s just that you haven’t proved anything. Not really. Nothing at all.”

He should have known. All his experience should have told him but he, like a blind fool, had overlooked the obvious. He had tried to convince her that no such thing as magic existed, that witchcraft was nothing but a pastime for fools.

And he had forgotten that she was a witch.

You can’t tell a person that what they believe in is ridiculous. You can’t take away something without offering something to take its place. Try it and you will fail. Sandra had become a witch because of certain reasons, and those reasons hadn’t changed. She was still what she had always been. Now, perhaps, she had lost her faith in Lefarge, but that was all. The big thing still remained. He had done nothing to shake her belief in that.

He could argue, but arguments could work both ways. Altering the terminology didn’t alter the facts. She believed in certain powers, ridiculous things like spells and enchantments, hexes and love charms...

He slapped his pocket. The thing was still there. He took it out and smiled into her eyes.

“You believe in witchcraft,” he said. “That means you must believe in the power of this charm. Correct?”

She nodded.

“And if I burn it my love for you will vanish?”

Again she nodded.

“I want you to marry me, Sandra,” he said deliberately. “I have asked you before and I ask you now and I will ask you again — when I have burned this”

“Mark! Please!”

“Do you honestly think I would do it if I wasn’t sure?” He looked at her and felt the loveliness of her like a physical pain. He would never change. How could he ever change when he needed her so much?

A gas cooker stood in the kitchen. He lit the main burner, waited a moment, then threw the charm into the center of the flames. For a moment it held its shape, then the dry wood caught and burned with a leaping flame. In minutes the bundle was unrecognizable ash.

Mark turned off the gas and looked at his watch. It was getting late, he had to get home, wash, shave, change and snatch some breakfast before getting to the office. He had little time.

“Mark!”

He had forgotten Sandra. She stood looking at him, eyes wide with anticipation. A nice enough girl, good skin, fine hair, not a bad figure either. A nice girl as girls went.

She would make someone a good wife.

He glanced at his watch again and hastily left the building.

A modem magician on a date to heal a soul.

Jackpot

The sphere was two inches in diameter and of a blackness so intense it appeared a two-dimensional circle against the gray, crackle-finish of the test bench.

“Something new?”

McCarty crossed the compartment in three easy strides. He eased the pack from broad shoulders took the pipe from his mouth and poked the sphere with the stem. The thing was solid but light; the thrust of the pipe sent it rolling across the bench.

“Careful!”

Larman reached out a hand to form a barrier The sphere came to a halt. McCarty raised a bushy eyebrow.

“Dangerous?”

It was, Larman knew, a question tantamount to an insult. McCarty knew that Larman had better sense than to introduce anything dangerous into the ship. Only an idiot would deliberately court disaster and Larman was far from that.

“Not dangerous,” he said stiffly. “Only curious.”

“How can you be certain?”

McCarty squatted and examined the sphere, sucking at his pipe as he did so. He never smoked it, only sucked it, and it was a habit which grated on his companion’s nerves. It was odd, thought Larman, how hateful that pipe made McCarty. His own habit, that of chewing gum was, of course nothing in comparison.

“I’ve tested it,” said Larman. He stilled the unspoken protest. “Not in the ship. I assembled a test-rig outside and gave it the works. It’s as dangerous as putty.”

McCarty twitched his eyebrows.

“A native brought it,” explained Larman. He had grown used to the other’s signals. “While you were away. How did you make out?”

“Nothing worth the trouble of hauling. Well?”

“He came about an hour after you’d gone. I took a chance and gave him a handful of beads for it.” Larman drew a deep breath. This was his moment.

“A handful of beads!” McCarty almost exploded “For something as valuable as putty!”

“No. For the Jackpot!”

*

Every trader dreamed of the Jackpot. Hard-bitten wanderers woke in their patched-up cans smiling like babies at the thought of it. Burned-out wrecks wept m their liquor and dragged themselves out for one more try at finding it. A few, a very few, found it. The Jackpot! The thing that spelt fortune.

Glusky had found it on Eridani IV, a weed he had smoked in lieu of tobacco—and found he had stumbled on the secret of doubling the life-span. Hilbrain had, literally, fallen over it on Rigel VII, the ore he had sworn at now lined half the rocket tubes in the galaxy. Bensen, Kildare, a handful of others, all keeping alive the legend. One for ten thousand traders who died broke or simply vanished. It was enough.

“Are you sure?” McCarty didn’t raise his voice but muscle made ridges along the line of his jaw. It was no time for joking.

“I’m sure.” Larman reached out and picked up the sphere. He rolled it between his palms then threw it at the other man. “Catch!”

McCarty caught. He stared down at the pool of utter blackness cradled in his hands, then at Larman, then at the sphere again. When he put it down he was frowning.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know!”

McCarty was tired. He’d had a hard three days trading with the natives without financial success and his nerves were ragged with the effort of adhering to the complicated ritual governing such operations. His head ached, too, from the weight of the translator and he wanted a shower. With a visible effort he controlled himself.

“Listen,” he said dangerously. “If you’re playing some kind of stupid game — ”

“You listen.” Larman could afford to be curt. It was his turn to be dominant. “I told you that I’d tested it. Just in case you’ve forgotten I’m an engineer and a good one. I also know something about physics, chemistry, metallurgy and a few other subjects. I mention this in case you imagine that I’m a fool.”

McCarty grunted. Larman knew no more than any good explorer-trader had to know but that didn’t automatically absolve him from being an idiot. Who but a fool would continuously chew cud like a cow? Who, if it came to that, would be a trader in the first place if they had all their marbles?

Captains, of course, were different. McCarty was the captain.

“I’ve tested it,” repeated Larman hastily. He had recognized McCarty’s expression. “I don’t know what it is but it’s something new to modem science.” Lovingly he picked up the sphere.

“It’s the Jackpot!

*

They tested it. They did everything Larman had already done and a lot more besides. It wouldn’t cut, it couldn’t be drilled, it couldn’t be crushed, cracked or shattered. It resisted acid and alkali, heat and cold, vibration and radiation. It was an enigma and McCarty didn’t like enigmas.

“It’s light,” he said. “If it’s metal then it has to be hollow.”

“It isn’t metal.” Larman pushed goggles up on his forehead, the searing blue-white flame of the atomic cutter dying as he flipped the switch. That cutter was designed to shear through inch-thick high temperature alloy. The sphere hadn’t been affected.

“All right,” snapped McCarty. “So it isn’t metal. So how about you telling me what it is?”

“I don’t know.”

McCarty grunted. Gingerly he touched the sphere and found it, as usual, the same temperature as before. Said temperature being a few degrees lower than its immediate surroundings — in this case his own hand. The base on which it rested, a block of native wood, showed no sign of the fierce heat of the cutter.

Larman watched the gesture and pursed his lips.

“We can speculate,” he said, “but we can’t be sure. Our information, at this stage, is purely negative.”

“We know what it isn’t,” said McCarty. “We don’t know what it is.” He replaced the sphere on its base, his fingers lingering the ebony surface. “Let’s try an electric arc.”

They tried an electric arc. They tried two focused burners. They tried X-rays and ice and, from his expression, Larman had the suspicion that McCarty was trying prayer. The sun went down and they were still trying. Later, in the snug confines of the living compartment, Larman summed up what they had learned.

“It’s indestructible, as far as we know, that is. It seems totally absorbent to all sources of energy. Light, radiation, even the friction-heat generated by attempting to penetrate it, all are absorbed. The thing must be soaking up energy all the time — the temperature differential tells us that.”

“Like a sponge,” said McCarty. He lay on his bunk, thoughtfully sucking his pipe, the little burbling noises blending with the soft purr of the fan.

“Exactly!” Larman was triumphant. “A kind of static matrix of stress force capable of soaking up a tremendous amount of energy.”

“Why tremendous?”

“Its weight for one thing, its bulk for another and look at the way we’ve poured energy into it without any kind of reaction. Anyway, my guess is that the thing was made to do just that.”

McCarty nodded. Larman made sense. The sphere was obviously an artifact and yet...

He thought of the planet on which they had landed, the semi-tropical climate with the semi-tropical vegetation, the entire lack of any sign of civilization. Kaldar II was a primitive world, the natives living a standard, pre-urban existence based on tribal culture, hunting and natural harvesting. They, certainly, hadn’t manufactured the sphere.

But if they hadn’t, who had?

And why?

*

Larman screwed a jeweler’s glass into one eye, steadied the hair-fine probe in his right hand and stooped over the sphere. Minutely he examined, not for the first time, the area of blackness magnified in his vision. It was like staring into a bottomless pit.

Irritably he straightened and rubbed his eyes. He was alone in the ship, McCarty had gone down to the village to ask questions about the sphere and, knowing the intricate procedure adhered to by the natives, there was no telling how long he would be. In the meantime Larman was trying to solve a mystery.

The mystery being the sphere.

Nothing, he reasoned, and McCarty had agreed with him, was made without a reason. The sphere was an artifact, it had been manufactured, it must serve a purpose. Unless they discovered what that purpose was then the sphere, instead of being the Jackpot, was just a scientific novelty. True, they could take it back and have the scientists drool over it but while that might spell fame it didn’t spell fortune. The cash would go to the bright spark who figured out a way to use it, not to the ones who didn’t recognize its worth.

Grimly he replaced the glass and probed again at the sphere.

He was still probing when McCarty returned.

“Find anything?”

“No.” Larman eased his aching back. “You?”

“Nothing that would hurt if you put it in your eye.” McCarty helped himself to water, swallowing three measures before emptying the paper cup over his head. “Those natives!”

Larman nodded his sympathy. The natives were tall humanoids, blue-skinned and eight-fingered. They spoke a gushing sibilance with occasional grunts, which the translators broke down into a weird kind of broken, disjointed English. They had a system of ritual symbolism, which made the most rigid Earth Court Etiquette seem like a free-for-all at a teenage banquet. And they smelt.

“So they don’t know where the sphere came from?” Larman sighed his disappointment. McCarty surprised him.

“They know, all right,” he said. “They dug it out of the ground. What it is and who made it is something else.” He helped himself to more water, sat down and stretched. “It isn’t indigenous to this culture that’s for certain.”

“A previous race?”

“Perhaps. Or visitors way back. Who can tell?”

Larman wasn’t surprised. Kaldar II wouldn’t be the first planet that had experienced the rise and fall of many civilizations, nor would it have been the first to have been visited by other races. He wasn’t surprised but he was disappointed. If the sphere was a lone freak then hitting the Jackpot would be that much harder. He said so. McCarty shrugged.

“If we can’t crack it then what’s the difference?”

“A lot of difference!” Larman was annoyed. “Maybe they only do whatever they’re supposed to do if paired or in series.” He blinked. “Maybe that’s it?”

“Maybe that’s what?”

“The answer.” Larman was excited. “Look at it in a logical way. We have something that soaks up energy, right?”

“So?”

“So maybe that’s just what it is. A means of strong power. A battery!”

“Batteries are usually carried around,” reminded McCarty. Larman waved aside the objection.

“What do you do with your dead flashlight cells? Toss them aside, that’s what. Well perhaps whoever dumped this thing simply replaced it with another just as you do with your flashlight cells.”

McCarty thought about it for a moment.

“But if it could be recharged?”

“Perhaps he was in a hurry, or careless, or simply didn’t care. Perhaps anything.” Larman screwed the glass back into his eye. “Shut up, now, and let me work!”

*

He didn’t find what he was looking for but, as he pointed out, it didn’t really matter.

“I was hoping to find a couple of minute openings,” Larman explained. “Connections, sort of, but that would be silly. Whoever used it wanted to connect it up fast so they wouldn’t have used tiny openings.”

What would they have used?” McCarty had caught some of Larman’s enthusiasm.

“I don’t know. An electronic field, perhaps, or a negative material to the sphere itself.” For a moment Larman looked worried, then he cheered up. “It isn’t important.”

“How do you make that out?” It was hot inside the ship and McCarty was sweating even though he, like Larman, had stripped to the waist. Larman grinned.

“Simple. No matter how effective this thing is it must have a critical point. I mean, there must be a time when we just can’t force any more energy into it. A full-charge point if you like.”

“So?”

“So my guess is that something will happen then. They must have built in a device to indicate the amount of charge the thing has or something to tell when it is fully charged. When that happens we may learn something.”

He gestured to the rig he had assembled around the sphere.

“I’m going to feed it energy and, at the same time, check continuously for any signs of electro-magnetic variation, radiation, the works. I’ve even mounted it on a scale to check the weight and rigged a couple of microphones set for ultrasonic.”

McCarty sucked at his pipe and frowned.

“I don’t like it,” he said.

“What don’t you like?”

“All this,” McCarty gestured towards the equipment.

“Suppose something should go wrong?”

“Such as?” Larman was contemptuous. McCarty’s frown deepened.

“I don’t know. Anything.” He tried to think of something to explain his fears. Larman didn’t give him time.

“Nothing can go wrong,” he said with lordly superiority. “I know that. Everything is under full control.” He waved an admonishing finger. “After the way we tested the sphere outside I’m surprised that you should even consider it dangerous. Anyway,” he added the final point, “I can’t run this control outside unless we dismantle half the ship.”