The Tar-aiym Krang (11 page)

Chapter Seven

The great port lay a considerable distance from the city, so that its noise, fumes, and bustling commerce would not interfere with the business of the people or the sleep of the king. It was too far to walk. He hailed a
Meepah-
beast rickshaw and the driver sent the fleet-footed creature racing for the port. The
Meepahs
were fast and could dodge jams of more modern traffic. It was a sporting way to travel, and the moist wind whistling past his face wiped away the slight vestiges of sleepiness which had begun to overtake him. As the animals were pure sprinters and good for only one long run an hour they were also expensive. They flew past slower vehicles and great hoverloaders bringing tons of goods to and from the port. As they had for centuries and doubtless would for centuries to come, the poor of Moth walked along the sides of the highway. There were none of the public moving walkways on Moth that could be found in profusion in the capitals of more civilized planets. Besides being expensive, the nomad populace tended to cut them up for the metal.

When he reached an area away from the bustling commercial pits that he thought would be close to the private docks, he paid off the driver, debarked, and hurried off into the geat tubular buildings. He knew more than a little of the layout of the great port from his numerous trips here as a child. Where his interest in the place had sprung from he couldn’t guess. Certainly not from Mother Mastiff! But ever since an early age he’d been fascinated by the port for the link it provided with other worlds and races. When he had been able to steal away from that watchful parental eye he’d come here, often walking the entire distance on short, unsteady legs. He’d sit for hours at the feet of grizzled old crewmen who chuckled at his interest and spun their even older tales of the void and the pinpricks of life and consciousness scattered through it for his eager mind and the fawning attention he gave freely. There were times when he’d stay till after dark. Then he’d sneak ever so carefully home, always into the waiting, scolding arms of Mother Mastiff. But at the port he was all but mesmerized. His favorites had been the stories of the interstellar freighters, those huge, balloonlike vessels that plied the distances between the inhabited worlds, transporting strange cargoes and stranger passengers. Why sonny, they’d tell him, if’n it weren’t fer the freighters, the hull damn uneeverse ‘ud collapse, ‘an Chaos himself ‘ud return t’ rule!

Now maybe he’d have a chance to see one of those fabulous vessels in person.

A muted growl went audible behind him and he turned to see the bulky shape of a cargo shuttle leap spaceward, trailing its familiar tail of cream and crimson. The sound-absorbing material in its pit was further abetted by the layered glass of the building itself in muffling the scream of the rockets and ramjets. It was a sight he’d seen many times before, but a little piece of him still seemed to go spaceward with each flight. He hurried on, searching for a dock steward.

Approximately every fifteen minutes a shuttle landed or took off from Drallar port. And it was by no means the only one on the planet. Some of the private ports managed by the lumbering companies were almost as big. The shuttles took out woods, wood products, furs, light metals, foodstuffs; brought in machinery, luxury goods, traders, and
touristas.
There! Checking bales of plastic panels was the white and black checkered uniform of a steward. He hurried over.

The man took in Flinx’s clothing, age, and ship-bag and balanced these factors against the obviously dangerous reptile coiled alertly now about the boy’s shoulder. He debated whether or not to answer the brief question Flinx put to him. Another, senior steward pulled up on a scoot, slowed and stopped.

“Trouble, Prin?”

The steward looked gratefully to his superior. “This . . . person . . . wishes directions to the House of Malaika’s private docks.”

“Um.” The older man considered Flinx, who waited patiently. He’d expected something of this sort, but read only good intentions on the elder’s part. “Tell him, then. ‘Twill do no harm to let him have a gander at the ships, and mayhap he has real reason for being there. I’ve seen queerer board Malaika’s craft.” The man revved his scoot and darted off down the vaulting hallway.

“Pit five, second transverse tube on your left,” the man said reluctantly. “And mind you go nowhere else!”

But Flinx had already started off in the indicated direction.

It wasn’t hard to find, but the telescoping rampway seemed endless. It was a relief to see the tall figure of the merchant waiting for him.

“Glad to see you show,
kijana!”
he bellowed, slapping Flinx on the back. Fortunately, he managed to avoid most of the blow. Pip stirred slightly, startled. “You’re the last to arrive. Everyone else is already aboard and safely tucked away. Give your pack to the steward and strap in. We’re just ready to cut.”

Malaika disappeared forward and Flinx gave his bag to the officious-looking young fellow who wore the House of Malaika arms (crossed starship and credit slip) on his cap and jacket. The man ducked into a low door to the rear, leaving Flinx alone in the small lock. Rather than stand by himself until the man returned to check him off, he moved forward to the passenger cabin and found himself an empty seat.

Since this was a private and not a commercial shuttle, it was smaller than most. There were only ten seats in the low, slim compartment. The craft was obviously not designed for extended journeys. The decoration verged on the baroque. He peered down the narrow aisle.

The first two seats were occupied by Malaika and his Lynx, Sissiph. She was clad in a bulky jumpsuit for a change, but it served only to emphasize the beauty of her face. In the second row Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex were leaning into the aisle, arguing animatedly but amiably on some subject which remained incomprehensible to Flinx on every level of perception. Then came their two starship pilots, Atha Moon and the shadow man, Wolf. Both were staring intently, but at different things. Atha was gazing out the port, observing what she could of their normal preparations for lift. The man’s eyes were focused unwaveringly on an invisible point six inches in front of his nose. His face was, as usual, utterly devoid of expression. He remained unreadable.

Atha’s attention seemed to vary awkwardly between the outside of their tiny vessel and the front of the cabin. She was continually darting her head into the aisle or poking it above the back of the seat in front of her. Especially whenever an unusually loud giggle or chuckle came from that vicinity. Probably she thought herself inconspicuous. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed him come aboard behind her. In any event she seemed unconcerned about Wolf’s presence, Even from here he could see the way the muscles in her neck and cheeks tightened, the way her blood pressure changed and her breathing increased, in response to the by-play from up front. It was mild, but still. . . . He shook his head. They hadn’t even reached their ship yet and already an explosive situation was building. He could not tell how long it had been forming, but he did know one thing. He personally had no wish to be around when it finally came to a head.

He wondered if Malaika had the slightest inkling that his personal pilot of six years was hopelessly in love with him.

There were several empty seats, so he chose the one behind Atha. Not that he preferred it so much to any other, but he preferred to stay as far away as possible from the enigmatic Wolf. He couldn’t read the man, so he was still unsure of him. As he had on numerous other occasions, he wished his peculiar talents wouldn’t be so capricious in their operation. But when he directed his attention to Wolf there was only an oddly diffuse blank. It was like trying to fathom a heavy mist. Dew did not hold the symbols well.

A brief admonition came over the cabin speaker and Flinx felt the ship tilt under him. It was being raised hydraulically. Shortly it had settled steady at its liftoff angle of seventy degrees.

Another problem brought itself to his notice as he was strapping himself in. Pip was still coiled comfortably about his left shoulder. This definitely was not going to work! How were they going to handle the minidrag? He motioned the steward over. The man struggled up the aisle by means of handles set into the sides of the chairs. He eyed the snake warily and became a bit more polite.

“Well, sir, it seems to be capable of keeping a pretty firm grip with that tail. It can’t stay like it is, though, because on lift it’d be crushed between your shoulder and the chair.” The way he said it made it plain that he wouldn’t mind observing that eventuality. He went back down the aisle.

Flinx looked around and finally managed to urge the snake onto the thick arm of the seat opposite his. Since Pip was an arboreal creature, Flinx was much more concerned about how it would react to the pressure of liftoff than to the condition of weightlessness. Not to mention how he’d manage himself.

He needn’t have worried. The luxurious little craft lifted so smoothly that pressure was practically nonexistent, even when the rockets took over from the ramjets. It was no worse than a heavy blanket on his chest, pressing him gently back into the padded seat. The muted hum of the rockets barely penetrated the well-shielded cabin. Overall, he felt only a mild sense of disorientation. By contrast, Pip appeared positively ecstatic. Then he remembered that Pip had been brought to Moth by spaceship and had therefore undergone this same experience at least twice before. His apprehensions had been groundless. But they had served to take his mind off the flight. Another glance at the minidrag showed the narrow head weaving from side to side while the single-tipped tongue darted rapidly to and fro, touching everything within reach. The pleated wings were unfurled and flapping in sheer pleasure.

After the rockets cut off and the little ship drifted weightlessly, Flinx felt acclimated enough to reach over and pick up the snake. He replaced it on its familiar spot on his shoulder. The confident pressure on his arm and back was, as ever, reassuring. Besides, the darn thing was having entirely too much fun. And the one thing they definitely did not need at the outset of their expedition was the venomous reptile flapping crazily in free-fall about the confined space of the cabin.

They passed several vessels in parking orbit around the planet, including one of the great fueling stations for the shuttles. Some of the giant craft were in the process of loading or unloading, and men in suits floated about them sparkling like diamond dust. The boy’s eves drank in everything and hungered for more. Once, when the shuttle turned ninety degrees on its side and moved to line up for conjunction with their starship, the planet itself rolled majestically into view beneath them.

From this angle the famous ring-wings were clearly visible. The radiant butter-gold layers of rock and gas combined with the lakes which glistened sapphirelike through breaks in the cloud cover to make the planet more than ever resemble the Terran insect for which it had been named.

He got only the slightest glimpse of their ship, the
Gloryhole.
That was enough. Sandwiched in among bloated freighters and pudgy transports she looked like a thoroughbred in a barnyard. She still had the inevitable shape of a doublekay drive ship, a balloon stuck onto the end of a plumber’s helper, but the lines were different from most. The balloon at one end was the passenger and cargo space, and the plunger at the other the generating fan for the posigravity field. Instead of being wide and shallow, like a plate, the
Gloryhole’
s generating fan was narrower and deep, chalicelike. The passenger-cargo area was still balloon-shaped, but it was a streamlined, tapered balloon. Simply on looks alone one could tell that the
Gloryhole
was faster than any regular freighter or liner aspace. It was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.

He felt a slight jolt through his harness as the shuttle clicked into the transfer lock of the big ship. Following the steward’s instructions he released himself from the restraining straps and drifted after the others into the umbilical tube, pulling himself hand over hand along the portable pullway. The luxury of the
Gloryhole
in comparison to the freighters he’d had described to him made itself quickly apparent. The starship’s airlock was furlined.

The steward and Malaika exchanged brief orders and the uniformed young man drifted out of the tube, pulling in the line behind him. After a bit the door whirred shut, and they were effectively separated from the shuttle.

“
Je?
If you’ll all follow me—use the handholds— we’ll adjourn to the salon.” Malaika started off through the lock exit. “Atha, you and Wolf get up to Control and start up the drive. Let’s have some decent gravity around here. A
buibui
I’m not, to spin my own web! The two of you know where your cabins are.” Atha and the skull-face moved off through a side passage. Malaika swiveled to face them. “The rest of you I’ll show to your rooms myself.”

The salon was a fairyland of glass, wood, and plastics. Bubbles of crystal containing brilliantly colored forms of aquatic life were suspended throughout the big room by a thin but unbreakable network of plastic webbing. Real trees grew through the green-fur floor, each representing a different species native to Moth. Metal sculptures layered with gem dust hung cloudlike from the ceiling, which was a tri-dee soloid depicting an open sky complete to clouds and sun. It began to darken, effectively simulating the sunset taking place on the planet’s side below. It was an odd simile to come to mind, but for some reason Flinx could best liken the sensation to walking through an especially fine beer.

The ship shuddered once, twice, ever so imperceptibly, and he could feel the weight beginning to return to his body. He started to float toward a side door and then began flailing frantically so that he would land on his feet and not his head. A glance showed that none of the other passengers were experiencing similar difficulties. Sissiph was being steadied by Malaika, and Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex hadn’t even bothered to pause in their argument. Angrily he got his errant legs under him. No one commented on his obvious difficulty, for which he was grateful. Full gravity returned after a very short interval.