Sandcats of Rhyl (3 page)

Nightwind shrugged it off. Maybe Dhal was merely a bully looking for someone to beat up. If so, he’d picked the wrong one. Heuser had no sense of propriety; he would have killed his attacker with little sense of loss or guilt.

“You seem to be quite expert at taking care of yourself,” the woman pressed. “You must have positively exciting tales to tell.” Again the blatant request for him to spill — what? There was only one thing Nightwind had to discuss that could be of interest to the lovely, brown-tressed Steorra.

The diary and maps of Dr. Alfen. How had she found out he had them? Did she know for certain or was she probing for information? Was she positive and merely looking for confirmation? What
was
Steorra’s game?

“I lead a dull life.”

A voice from behind angrily bellowed, “Your life’s about over! Nobody beats up my friend and lives to brag about it!”

Nightwind swiveled and looked over his shoulder at another hulk of a man. Tall, well muscled, but lacking the massiveness of Dhal. Nightwind could sense they were two of a kind. He wondered if he would have to kill this one as an object lesson.

“What’s your name, sire? I might as well know who’s annoying me.”

“Slayton.
Lane
Slayton. Ever hear of me?” The voice was tinged with pride and arrogance. Nightwind sighed. He
had
heard of Slayton. The man had made a reputation for himself as a law-enforcement officer on several frontier worlds. His methods, however, smacked more of the vigilante than legal. Rumors said Slayton would rather kill than let a man stand trial where lie detector and telepath might prove innocence.

The law meant nothing to Slayton. He simply enjoyed killing.

Seeing the way his arms hung, slightly bent, told Nightwind that Slayton was both carrying a weapon and was ready to use it. An experienced appraisal indicated Slayton’s gun was in a cross-draw holster at his belt.

With a movement so fast he left a blurred track across Slayton’s field of vision, Nightwind whipped out of the chair, seized the gunman’s left arm and pulled. Taken off guard, Slayton found himself facing in the opposite direction, Nightwind close behind him.

“I’ve got a needlegun pressed firmly against your spine.” Nightwind jabbed to let the man know it wasn’t a bluff. “After I relieve you of your firearm, you may leave. If you don’t, would you prefer burial in space or on the next planet we land on?”

“I … I — ” Slayton stuttered.

“Good man.” A deft flick lifted Slayton’s blaster, a small, compact model obviously well used. “And good-bye!”

Nightwind sent Slayton stumbling with a powerful shove. The man half turned and glared back, hatred flaring in his washed-out blue eyes. His lips curled back in a feral snarl, then he hastily left.

“Such dreary people on board pleasure ships these days,” Nightwind commented as he sat down again. “Ever since the Covenant allowed everyone to go armed, things like this happen. Heuser keeps telling me I should teach those fools some manners. His idea is to kill them. I can’t quite agree, but sometimes I think my friend has the right idea.”

Nightwind watched Steorra pale visibly. On impulse, he slid Slayton’s blaster across the table to her. “Here. You can have this as a souvenir. I don’t really need one.” He smiled ingenuously.

He watched a frightened animal look cross the lovely creature. She tried to hide her unease and failed miserably. A shaky hand timidly touched the pistol. Steorra suddenly scooped up the blaster and left without another word.

Nightwind wondered how long it would be before Slayton had his blaster back in its holster.

The trio met in Steorra’s suite. Dhal sat slump shouldered. The dejection on his face told that he wasn’t used to being tossed around like a feather pillow. His hands unconsciously clenched and unclenched as if longing for Nightwind’s throat under his powerful fingers.

Steorra was still pale. In stark contrast was Lane Slayton. His face was contorted in fierce rage. He grabbed the blaster from the young woman and blazed, “I ought to go burn him to a cinder!”

Steorra’s lips thinned to a line as she spoke. “You’ll do no such thing, Lane! I hired you for one reason and one reason only. And it wasn’t killing. If Nightwind forces you into self-defense, that’s something else. But we’ve got to get my father’s diary back. This Nightwind’s out to discredit him. Maybe even steal whatever discovery my father made on Rhyl. His letters…” Her voice faded as she thought of the glowing words Dr. Lorric Alfen had sent her about his find on the desert world. Once, he’d even said it was of greater magnitude than the deserted cities on Sigma Draconis IV. And Steorra knew that discovery was the basis for her father’s wealth and deserved reputation as a leading archeologist. Selling the secrets of that lost race had enabled the man to continue his expensive archeological digs on a myriad of worlds without having to kowtow to a board of directors intent on publications and prestige.

Even though Dr. Alfen had never mentioned specifics, he’d thought Rhyl to be an even more significant find than the spidery cities on the other long-dead planet.

Dhal broke Steorra’s fond remembrances of her father, saying, “I’d say what he done to us is good enough to burn him.”

Slayton waved his hand to silence his partner. “That’s not true, Dhal. We’ll play along like the lady says. She’s the boss.”

Steorra relaxed slightly at his words. She needed these men, as unstable as they seemed. She had been living too long in that university to cope with primitive worlds, scrabbling just to stay alive.

Steorra said, “I think it’s be best not to cross paths with this Roderick Nightwind again. He seems to be able to take care of himself.”

“And that runty assistant of his, too,” Dhal added.

“I wonder about that. He didn’t seem to be taking care of
him
as much as worrying about
you,
” Steorra mused, a thoughtful look on her face.

Dhal scowled. He said, “I don’t need anyone looking after me. Least of all the likes of Nightwind.”

“I think Steorra’s right about just following them,” Slayton hastily said. “Let them lead us to the prof’s find, then … well, we’ll see about Nightwind.”

“I knew it was the right thing hiring you,” Steorra said. “Some of the rumors had you a little bloodthirsty, but you’ve been a policeman on too many worlds too long. You’ll do the right thing, the legal thing. I’m confident you’ll be able to stop Nightwind from stealing my father’s work.”

Slayton and Dhal exchanged knowing grins. Slayton said, “Don’t worry, we’ll stop him dead in his tracks.”

THE DAYS REMAINING until Nightwind and Heuser disembarked dragged. The pair argued endlessly over the incident with Slayton and Dhal. The best Nightwind could do was keep his diminutive companion in a state of semicalm. The cyborg said over and over he wanted nothing more than to tear the two men apart with his bare hands.

Nightwind reasoned with him, “Look at it like this, Heuser. If we string them along, sooner or later their real reason will surface.
Then,
we can see how much force to use. It’s just possible they’re a pair of spacebums that just enjoy going around stirring up trouble. They might not know a thing about our little venture to Rhyl.”

“You don’t believe that any more than I do,” the cyborg snorted, peering up from his hundred-sixty-centimeter height to his hundred-ninety-centimeter-tall companion. “You don’t believe that any more than I could, even if I’d taken a snootful of happy dust. Slayton’s got a lousy reputation. When he was a cop out on the Rim, he didn’t bring in as many men as he burned on the spot. He’s cold-blooded, a filthy butcher and you know it. And that Dhal fellow must grow on the same vine. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be hanging around with Slayton.”

Nightwind said nothing. What Heuser was pointing out was true. The only piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit — quite — was Steorra. Her part in the encounter was anything but clear to the man. He knew she was involved with Slayton and Dhal, but how? Why?

The landing and leaving the ship provided a welcome change in routine for the two. Never ones to fall into an easy pattern, they rejoiced when they were allowed to go planetside after six solar standard weeks in space.

Heuser cried joyously, “Air! Fresh, unrecycled air!” and promptly coughed. The dust hung like a dull brown curtain in the air. Vision from the top of the lift was cut to a mere hundred meters, so thick was the tan haze. Nightwind couldn’t help but see his friend’s eyes watering. His own were beginning to leak a little, too. After an asthmatic gasping, the cyborg started choking on the thick dust.

“What’s wrong, Heuser? Don’t you like this nice, clean air? After the scrubbed clean stuff we’ve been breathing for the last couple months, I would have thought you would enjoy this.”

“You knew it would be like this!” accused the smaller man. “You knew! You’ve got on a respirator!”

Nightwind’s hand instinctively went to the noseplugs he wore. The tiny filters spread his nostrils slightly, giving his nose a flattened appearance. He hadn’t believed it would be possible for the dust to be this thick, but it was pointless taking a chance. He’d brought his Earthside smog filters.

“Well, it’s still better than the ship’s air!” doggedly declared Heuser as he spat a mouthful of sand over the side of the descending elevator.

After they gently touched down at the base of the ship, Nightwind found a better view of this arid planet of Rhyl. From the top of the starship, the cloying dust obscured the view. On the ground, he could see the city streets radiating out in front of him like a spread fan. The distinctly dry dust odor stabbed at his nostrils, invaded the man’s mouth, and made his space black eyes water until tears left salt and sand streaks down his cheeks. Grit underfoot, grit on the luggage, dust everywhere.

Nightwind wryly thought the planet should have been called Dustball instead of Rhyl.

Like all such frontier worlds, customs inspection was a joke. Few ever came to backwater planets — if a world so cloaked with airborne dust could be considered backwater. The customs men were more interested in seeing what type fool would venture here on “business.”

Rhyl had very little industry. Potash was the primary source of revenue, and it wasn’t very lucrative, not with potash being available on virtually every planet ever found by man. Rhyl boasted no other industry worth mentioning.

Certainly not tourism, thought Nightwind as he looked up and down the street outside the customs shed. The brown veils of sand obscured everything; thin tendrils of dust reached out to touch his face with a coarse caress.

“Let’s go looking for some help, Heuser. On this sand hill, we’re not going to be able to find anything by ourselves.”

“Right,” Heuser agreed. “But what kind of man would be able to guide us on this mess? A desert rat?”

“Why not? There’s a sign that says ‘Desert Rat Tours, Ltd.’ Sounds like the kind of man we want.”

“He’s certainly got a sense of humor. A dry sense of humor.”

Nightwind laughed as he pushed his way through the airlocklike door into the store. He dropped his single piece of luggage on the floor. A small brown cloud of fine grit surged up to settle slowly back down around his boots. Nightwind sneezed in spite of the nose filters. This planet would take a lot of getting used to.

“Well, gentle beings, what might I be doin’ to help you?”

Nightwind turned and saw a wizened man standing behind the dirty counter. The man was dressed in a simple overall lacking in zippers or any other visible fastener. Nightwind guessed that a pressure strip or an electrostatic band might hold everything together. It would provide a dustproof seal, a vital commodity on Rhyl.

The man’s hair was shot with streamers of gray. Perhaps once, in younger days, it might have been a deep black like Nightwind’s own. Nightwind guessed years, possibly decades, on Rhyl had assaulted it, bleached it and added the iron gray touches. The face under the straight hair was deeply tanned by wind and wear. Deep furrows cut across his forehead and crow’s feet danced at the corners of hazel eyes.

Nightwind introduced himself and stuck out a hand. He winced with the pressure exerted when the man squeezed down. It was obviously a ritual to show the city boys what a real he-man from a frontier world could do.

“I’m P.R. Richards,” the man boomed louder than necessary in the small enclosure. “And what’s your name, shortie?”

“Heuser. Put it there, old man!”

Nightwind watched, amused, as Richards’ face deepened in color. When the tendons stood in bold relief on the man’s arm, Nightwind knew the guide had met his match. A tiny bead of perspiration formed on Richards’ face as the silent duel continued. Nightwind knew Richards didn’t dare let up on the pressure or Heuser would crush his hand. And the small man seemed capable of increasing the pressure to any level he desired. He was showing no signs of exertion.

Heuser innocently said, “You’re sweating. Doesn’t seem that hot in here to me,” as he released the desert rat’s hand.

Richards rubbed his palm against the gray overall he wore. A look of respect replaced the scorn of a few minutes earlier. “Hard to keep thermostats working around here. Dust gets into everything. Damn stuff. A real shame you folks had to come this month. In a couple, three months the winds will’ve died down to nothing. Be summer then and hotter than the core of a super nova. Wind, dust, sun. Take your pick.”

“What’s the P.R. stand for in your name?” asked Heuser.

“Just initials,” he answered coughing a little. “Nothing more. What can I do for you?”

“Tell me what the initials stand for,” prodded Heuser, intent on his quest for useless knowledge.

Richards rubbed his hand again, then said weakly, “Patton Rommel.”

Nightwind smiled but had the grace not to laugh. “Do you live up to the names? You don’t seem to be built like a tank, so how are you on the desert?”

“None finer!”

“We’re looking for someone to take us into the deep erg. A good ways into the boondocks. Think you could guide us in and back?”

Richards scratched his chin. “For a price, I might be willin'. But it all depends on where. No pile of credits is going to make me go out to some places on this world. Born and raised on Rhyl, I was. I know it better’n most of the wet-worlders that drift in here. And I know how far to press my luck with the desert.”