Carlyle lifted his eyebrows and glanced at Cephean. The cynthian was watching them both impassively, in apparent contentment. Carlyle accepted his glass and sipped at it. He braced himself for the next question. "You haven't come across a rigger by the name of Legroeder, have you? I heard he was bound for Charos, some time back."
"Oh, then, that's another matter. He could be anywhere. What was his name? Magroder?" Jolson squinted harder.
"
Le
groeder. Small man, dark hair, sort of dark skin. He was a stern-rigger when I was with him."
Jolson squirted a stream from his bulb and swallowed it. "That name does sound familiar, and so does the description. But I'm not sure I could put the two together and make it stick. Let me think about it for a bit." His eyes narrowed and followed the passage of two female Narseil riggers across the bar. They were glistening, almost humanoid amphibians; the Narseil were rarely seen so openly in human company.
"Well, how about a couple of other friends of mine? Janofer Lief, a woman with long silvery hair." How many times would he have to go through this before he finished? How many times could he? "And . . . and Skan Sen. Light skin, solid facial features, faintly oriental eyes."
There was a quiet slurping noise—Cephean taking another swallow of his drink, then licking his lips. Jolson struck the table with his fist. "Skan! Yes, by damn—by damn, I did meet a Skan. But not at Charos. It was—where was it? It was, I think it was at Andros. That was it. By the Wall of the Barrier Nebula. Near Golen space." He took a long pull from his bulb.
Carlyle gulped his beermalt nervously. The light-show flickered against the side of Jolson's face, making him look even paler than he had before; there seemed a hint of translucence to him—or was that Carlyle's imagination?
"Golen space," he muttered.
"Uh-huh," said Jolson, peering at him. "You ever been there?"
Carlyle shook his head. "No, but I've heard." Pirates. Flux abscess. Many lost ships. Golen space began with the fringe outworlds, and became more lawless and politically unstable the farther one flew. There were rumors of hostile aliens, as well.
"Most of what you've heard is true—in essence if not degree." Jolson snapped at the waiter for another bulb. His voice was softer now, and Carlyle leaned forward to pick out the words. Cephean crooned softly to himself, apparently not listening. The riffmar squatted on the tabletop, looking as though
they
were listening.
"Did you talk to Skan? Did he say what he was doing there?"
"Well, no," answered Jolson. "Not exactly. This was some time ago, you understand, before my Dreznelles haul. And I don't believe I actually spoke much with him myself. But I do seem to recall hearing that a ship was taking on riggers heading for one of the Golen space worlds—I think one of the more civilized ones. He may have gone on that ship."
"But you don't know?"
"No," he said, shaking his head. He squirted liquid from his bulb.
Carlyle's hand trembled as he lifted his glass. He drank quickly, spilling beermalt down his chin. The thought of Golen space chilled him straight to the marrow. But if his friends were there, he had to go.
But . . . Jolson didn't know.
Jolson's eyes were flickering closed. He blinked them open again and looked at Carlyle with a start. "I'm tired now. Need sleep. And I really did want to talk some more with your Cephean friend." He sighed, finished his cocktail, and dropped the flattened blub on the table with the others. He started to rise. "Perhaps if you'll be here tomorrow, we can speak again." He fought back a tic in his left cheek; his face seemed almost bloodless.
"Legroeder," Carlyle said urgently. "Do you remember anything about Legroeder?"
"Who?" Jolson said, touching his brow.
"Legroeder."
"Legroeder? No, I don't believe I ever met a Legroeder." He smiled politely. "I wish I could help you. But there—you see? I can't. Good night."
Before Carlyle could think of another word to say, the man disappeared into the shadowy wing of the bar. Carlyle looked at the cynthian. "You all right?" he said softly. Cephean hissed faintly. His eyes were slits, with a sliver of glinting liquid showing in each. Carlyle sighed. "You're drunk. Let's go get a room."
* * *
Carlyle checked with assignments and records again the next day but learned nothing. He spent much of the day in the Guild bar; and when he got tired there he went over to the spaceport bar, which was busier, noisier, and a lot more ramshackle. There were few riggers there, however, and he could not manage to initiate a conversation with any of the regular spacers. Eventually he went for dinner, and then returned to the Guild bar. Cephean came with him this time, after recovering from the effects of a hangover.
Jolson was nowhere to be found. Carlyle went around hesitantly asking people—riggers and riggerguests and staffers—if they knew anything about Jolson (or Legroeder, Janofer, or Skan)—none did. Eventually he found a waiter who conceded that he was familiar with Jolson's habits. "He's probably in the city, sir. I don't know that I should say too much more—I wouldn't want to infringe on his privacy. I hope you understand."
"Then he's in and out a lot? Are most of his space stories true, usually?"
The waiter bit his lip.
A rigger sitting nearby, who looked as old and eccentric as Jolson, spoke up in a tone of friendly derision. "Good friend of mine, Jolson. We've rigged together—he's a fine rigger. He's also crazy as a Zebreedy lunecock. Don't believe a word he says. Say, waiter, could I have a sprite inhaler?"
Carlyle looked at him with an odd feeling. "How exactly do you mean that—'Don't believe him'? Do you mean he exaggerates a little, or do you mean I really shouldn't believe him?"
"Thank you, waiter." The man held a small inhaler to his nostrils and sniffed deeply. He smiled. "What's that? Jolson? Well, like I said, he stretches the truth here and there, and a lot of stories he makes up altogether. But then again he knows more than most three riggers put together, so you'd do well to heed him." He sniffed again from the inhaler.
The odd sensation in Carlyle's gut got worse. What was he supposed to believe? "Listen," he said earnestly, "do you know if Jolson has really been rigging recently out of Charos, or out near the edge of Golen space?"
"Oh, sure," said the man. His eyes were becoming hard, his pupils contracted to small dots. "Sure, Jolson's been out that way. And most of what he tells you about it is true, too. You can believe that." He glanced around the bar. "I believe I want to see a young fellow over here—good day!" He moved away, mumbling.
Carlyle grunted and turned to Cephean, who had sat silently through the exchange. "What do you think?" he asked, really meaning it rhetorically. But—perhaps Cephean had gleaned some insight telepathically if he had been following the conversation. "Should I believe what old man Jolson told me?"
The cynthian blinked. His whiskery eyebrows bunched together as he said, "Fferhaffs, Caharleel."
"Or did he make it all up when I gave him Skan's name?"
The eyebrows relaxed. "Fferhaffs." Cephean switched his tail and looped it up behind his head.
"Cephean, you're an enormous help, do you know that?"
"Hyiss. Sssanks hyou."
"I guess we'd better stay here and keep our ears open for more rumors."
But they did not hear more rumors that day, nor the next. In all, they stayed at the Gladstone Haven for five days without learning anything new; so, when Carlyle was offered a mail cargo for the Ettebes system, of which Charos was one of the planets, he accepted at once. As soon as Cephean was sober, they boarded
Spillix
and returned to space.
The flight to the Ettebes system took ten days, shiptime. They stayed in the system for a total of four weeks, checking all possible sources and traveling from one planet to another within the system. They delivered mail shipments to Deirdre (Ettebes VI), and then to Centrix (a minor planet between the orbits of Deirdre and Ettebes V), and to one of the moons of Charos, and finally to Charos (Ettebes IV) itself. At each of these stops, Carlyle asked through both official and unofficial channels after his friends. At the first three ports he learned nothing except that the city Charos on planet Charos was considered the best place in the system to look for anyone of the wandering sort, or for any kind of information or rumor where either spacers or riggers were concerned.
Upon arriving at Charos itself, he learned from Guild sources that Legroeder had been on the planet ten weeks earlier but had left, bound for Deirdre. However, on Deirdre there had been no record of him. Either the records in one place or the other were faulty, or Legroeder had changed destinations en route. Of Janofer and Skan, there was no official word.
On advice of several Guildsmen, Carlyle looked further in the city. The most popular rigger bar in this port was not the Guild bar, as was customary in most places, but a place downtown called the Rogues, Thieves & Spacemen's Tavern. There Carlyle spoke with a shuttle spacer introduced to him by a peculiarly gregarious rigger. The spacer claimed to have met and known Janofer on the second moon of Deirdre. She had talked of leaving the system soon, but that had been many weeks ago. He didn't know where she'd planned to go, but he had a hunch that she might have had the Andros system in mind. Carlyle was skeptical of the story (Why no record of her with the Guild? Were there
no
accurate records kept in this star system?), but he had nothing else to go on. And:
Andros.
That rang a bell; hadn't Jolson back at Gladstone said something about Andros? But that was Skan he'd been talking about.
They stayed in Charos a few extra days. It was a colorful and brawling city—and Cephean liked the Rogues, Thieves & Spacemen's Tavern, probably for the large number of interesting aliens who frequented the bar. The cynthian seemed to enjoy watching the aliens and listening, while he himself showed off his riffmar and ignored various people's attempts to converse with him. Finally, though, Carlyle learned that there was carryage available to Andros II, and he committed them for departure.
The flight to Andros was rather long in lightyears but fast in terms of shipdays through the Flux. There was mainly barren space between the two systems—and long, steady currents in the Flux. They were in the Flux for only seven days, shiptime. While they flew, Carlyle conferred with Janofer and Skan, hoping for encouragement. They talked over the difficulties he was having, and the two suggested that perhaps it would be better if he abandoned his search.
I'd love to see you again, Gev, you know that—but you have to think to your own life,
said Janofer.
I
couldn't consider it,
Carlyle said adamantly.
You're too important to me, and I want to fly with you—and that's all there is to it.
Well,
Skan admitted,
I
do have similar feelings myself, and even though I think you're crazy, I'm glad you're doing this.
And Janofer looked secretly delighted by both of them, despite her own remark.
But before he could ask them the most important question—where they were—they waved and departed from the net. And so it always went, in their conversations.
* * *
When
Spillix
arrived at Andros II, Carlyle found it an unspectacular planet in a spectacular parcel of space. Andros II was a dry world, rocky and sparsely vegetated. The spaceport sat on a huge bluff overlooking one of the small seas of the southern hemisphere, and the plain that bordered the sea was practically the planet's only developed arable land.
But the night sky was the world's main attraction, at least during the summer season. The night after their landing, Carlyle stood outside with Cephean and gazed up. The sky was dominated by the Wall of the Barrier Nebula—a broad, luminous plane that angled upward from the horizon and seemed to curve outward like a ribbon, away from the zenith. It was a gaseous-emission nebula, actually just one end of a nebula which reached far out into unexplored space. It glimmered with a pale cyan and red sheen, hovering like a ghostly stage curtain before the mysteries of the far regions of the galaxy. The dark track of a dust lane meandered across its face, obscuring a part of its glow; the dust lane extended beyond the far end of the Wall, smudging the view of stars there—in Golen space.
Golen space. They were virtually at the edge of it now, standing on a bluff on Andros II, looking up into a part of the night where the stars . . . well, they looked the same to the naked eye as stars in any other space, but they didn't
feel
the same to look at—and to Carlyle, to any rigger, it was the feeling which counted. He wondered how much of his uneasiness at the sight was due to years of rumor, and how much to a real intuitive sense of strangeness nearby. Beside him, Cephean was silent (but radiated
disquiet
). Was that Cephean's reflection of Carlyle's fear, or was it Cephean's own rigger-intuition?
If Golen space is where we're going, Carlyle thought, we could slip right up alongside the Wall, straight as an arrow, and off. Off the Wall and straight into . . . the heart of madness.
Why would they have gone in there? For what conceivable reason?
He shook his head. He needed to imagine, yes—but he had to control it.
Gev, have you found where you're heading yet?
Stupid question—even coming from Janofer, who ought to know better. Of course he didn't know where he was going; he didn't know where
they
were. But he had a terrible feeling.
You'll be careful, won't you—if you go out there?
He stared into space and shivered suddenly. "Let's go," he said to Cephean. As they turned he heard Janofer calling, asking him to tell her please that he'd be careful.
Later
, he thought angrily.
Talk to me later.
Never, in all the years he had known her, had he cut off Janofer like that—and he hated himself for it.
They went inside the spaceport Haven, and Carlyle went asking for information, as usual. His initial inquiries yielded nothing, however, and he decided to wait until morning to do anything further. He was weary—not of the day's activities but of the search itself, or of the seeming futility of it. And when he said good night to Cephean and closed the sliding door between their quarters, he wondered if he really had the right to drag Cephean on an endless, fruitless chase.