Hatches were clanging shut and the warning hooter was going before they were strapped in. The recoil chairs were part of the furniture of a small but comfortable wardroom and the cushions were deep and resilient, not lumpy and beaten down like Grellah's. Chai's large frame fitted one of them well; the I-C had members of all shapes and sizes, and the chairs were adjustable. Kettrick leaned back in his. He caught a glimpse of Larith's face, unusually pale, the eyes large and shadowed, and he thought, "Either way, she didn't count on this."

The thunder of ignition deafened him. The cruiser started, quivering all down her length, a great cat gathering her haunches under her for the spring. For a moment she poised there. Then with a roar and a squall like the mother of all great cats, she leaped skyward.

The sounds faded as she cleared the atmosphere. The enormous pressure on Kettrick's body lessened. He saw the all-clear light go on. Sekma unfastened his straps and let them roll back into their receptacles. He stood up.

"That's good," he said. "Now we can talk." He a.s.sisted Larith with her straps. "Are you quite comfortable? Can I get you anything? A drink, perhaps?"

She shook her head.

"Very well," said Sekma. "Now. You were about to tell me something, concerning Seri and the Doomstar."

Kettrick saw the astonished expressions on the faces of Boker and Hurth and Glevan, who had already been suffi-ciently astonished by the presence of Larith.

"Yes," she said. "I was about to tell you that Seri has gone in Ssessorn's yacht, with some of Ssessorn's men and some others, I don't know who. They have all the parts of the Doomstar..."

"That is to say, the mechanism by which a star is poi-soned." Sekma's manner was very direct now, very harsh, quite different from his former politeness. Larith seemed to flinch a little.

"Yes. I can't tell you much about that, I don't know..."

"Never mind, that doesn't matter. Go on."

"They are going," said Larith, "to poison a star, as a sign to the whole Cl.u.s.ter that their group is in power and must be obeyed. The time will coincide with the meeting of the League of Cl.u.s.ter Worlds..."

Sekma said impatiently, "All this we know." He leaned forward intently. "Can you tell me where he's going?"

Kettrick's own senses were so strained that he could hear the soft sound of Larith's breathing, see the slightest motion of her lips. It seemed a thousand years before she spoke.

"Yes," she said, "I do. Quite by accident, because he didn't tell me. Or perhaps not quite by accident. I was deliberately listening at a locked door. He's going to Trace."

20The name hit Kettrick like a blow between the eyes. In a kind of dumb anguish he looked at Sekma, who ignored him, his face still close to Larith's and his expression unchanged. He seemed to be studying her, and she met his gaze as straightforwardly as she had met Kettrick's when she said she didn't know what had happened that night in Ree Darva.

She said, "I don't know whether you can get to him in time. He's had a long head start, and Silverwing is very fast." She looked away and her shoulders quivered. "I wish I'd known before..."

Sekma took her hand in his. "I'm very grateful, Larith." He rose and went to the door. "Gentlemen, you might as well come with me. VarKovan will find quarters for you. Larith, you'll find the cellaret behind that panel; just touch the b.u.t.ton. Make yourself comfortable. We weren't expecting a lady, and it will take a little longer to find a place for you."

He swept them out into the corridor, waiting with a trifle of impatience while Chai came through after them, and then closed the bulkhead door, signing fiercely for silence. He led them quickly along the pa.s.sage and up a level to the chart-room, which was empty.

"Sit down, Johnny. I know exactly how you feel." He sat on the edge of the table and leaned his head on his hands. "Tell me, for G.o.d's sake, you know her. Is she lying? Or is she telling the truth?"

Kettrick said, "If she isn't telling the truth, she's awfully good." He shook his head. "I don't know, Sekma. I just don't know."

And he didn't. Larith had slipped so far away from him that he no longer knew at all what was in her mind. Or at least, he could no longer be sure that he knew.

He went to the wall chart viewer and punched the sector-number of the chart he wanted. He was aware of Boker and Hurth and Glevan standing by, waiting for an explanation but n.o.bly restraining themselves from breaking in. The chart appeared, brilliantly lighted, a tri-di navigational chart that showed the true positions of the stars. Kirnanoc, Trace, the Lantavan Bank, the White Sun.

"Trace would fill the bill," he said. "One inhabited planet, with a dominant species several steps above the Krinn but no great loss to anyone except themselves."

"Might fill it even better," Sekma said. "The people of Trace are a lot friendlier than the Krinn."

Kettrick stared, frowning, at the bright little suns and their tiny planets, at the dark cloud of the drift.

"We thought Trace had to be out because he had said he was going there," Sekma said. "Perhaps he was counting on that."

"Perhaps." Kettrick stared at the little stars, not seeing them now, seeing instead Larith's steady-eyed and honest face. "She might be telling the truth," he said, "as she be-lieves it. Seri might have let her get the wrong information deliberately, knowing she'd pa.s.s it on."

"The wrong information," Sekma said sharply. "You be-lieve it is wrong."

"Yes, I do."

"Why?"

Kettrick did not answer at once. He closed his eyes, re-membering. "I stood on the steps of Seri's house. I told him I had come back to finish what I started at the White Sun. I remember now the look on his face when I said that. Larith heard it too. Then they both tried to make me go away. When I wouldn't, and when Seri found he couldn't stop me by re-fusing me a ship, that was when he knew he had to kill me. Now why would he care if I went to the White Sun, unless he were going there himself? Unless he were afraid that I might interfere with his own plans?"

He faced Sekma. "Why would he care? But he did, enough to kill Khitu and Chai and me, and no fault of his that he didn't succeed. Why would he care, Sekma? Why would he give a d.a.m.n whether Iwent to the White Sun or not?"

Sekma was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "It's a hard choice, Johnny. I think you're right, but can I be sure?"

"No, you can't," answered Kettrick savagely. "And does it help any to think that Larith came only at the last minute, when Ssessorn must have begun to think we were too close for comfort on Seri's trail?

The penitent girl friend, divulg-ing vital information..." He made a harsh gesture. "What are you going to do?"

"I have two ships," said Sekma. "If I split my force I weaken it. I will need two ships to scan a whole planet quickly enough to find Silverwing, or the apparatus, in time...a.s.suming that we are not already too late. Yet I have two possible destinations. I dare not take the chance that Larith is indeed telling the simple truth and that Seri had some other reason for wanting to kill you; perhaps as elementary a reason as that your presence anywhere in the Cl.u.s.ter was an embarra.s.sment, since you might be picked up at any time, and that would inevitably draw attention to himself as your old friend and partner. Attention he could not very well afford, with the Doomstar in his pocket."

He turned to frown at the lighted chart.

"So I will have to split my forces. The small cruiser will jump for Trace, and I will radio back to the cruiser still at Achern to proceed there at once. Ssessorn will undoubtedly get the message and believe that we have all gone there. I hope he'll be happy. Otherwise he may feel that he has to commit some heavy Achernan armament to the cause. And we'll go to the White Sun."

He smiled at Kettrick, a strange fleeting smile with no humor in it. "Gambling, Johnny. How does it feel to gamble with a whole Cl.u.s.ter? Ha! Who wants to be G.o.d?" He shook himself, as though to shake away the doubt and fear as a swimmer shakes away water. "There's one thing in our favor, a.s.suming that we have chosen the right target. Big Brother has a little more push than Grellah. We don't have to go through the drift. We can do it in one jump."

Boker muttered, "Thank heaven for that."

Kettrick said, "What about Silverwing?"

"I don't know. But if she were mine, and I were going to use her on a mission like this one, I would have installed in her the most powerful unit I could lay my hands on."

"Ah," said Glevan, "then she will be well ahead of us. Now, supposing that we're a little late...can we jump back again?"

They all knew what he meant. Out of range of the Doomstar.

"Not immediately," Sekma said.

Glevan nodded. "If I'm not mistaken, you have on this cruiser an electronic check system which is much faster than the type we use, and an improved system of recharging, so that you can service your unit in, say, half the time it takes a poor merchantman."

"Less than half, if we forget some of the regulations. But you had still better hope we're not that late."

Because if we are, thought Kettrick, what happens to the Cl.u.s.ter afterward will be of no concern to us.

Sekma spoke into an intercom and then motioned them all out.

"You'll have to clear the chartroom, we've got work to do. And there'll be plenty of time to talk while we're in jump. Don't forget there's a lot I don't understand, either."

VarKovan, the Shargonese, was waiting for them in the corridor. He smiled, his teeth startlingly white against the glossy purple-red of his skin. "You'll have to sleep watch-and-watch-about, I'm afraid.Having the lady aboard makes problems."

They followed him to a cabin the size of a broom closet, with two stacked bunks, normally a.s.signed to any extra personnel who might be riding the big cruiser.

"It's fine," Boker said, "Except for one thing. It's dry."

"The I-C thinks of everything," said VarKovan, and pro-duced two bottles from a locker. "Sekma's instructions."

He refused to join them and left. They sat on the bunks and the floor and Boker served out the liquor. Then he looked at Kettrick.

"I am d.a.m.ned glad you got away, Johnny. The I-C boys had us loose just fifteen minutes after you called."

"Before that," said Glevan, "it was a long afternoon, try-ing to convince those children of perdition that Boker was an old friend of Seri's and only wanted to say h.e.l.lo."

The cruiser went into jump before they had emptied half the bottle.

21.

Later that night, or what pa.s.sed for night, after Larith had gone to her cabin and they had the wardroom to them-selves, Sekma listened to the full account of Kettrick's meet-ing with Seri and what had happened afterward.

And he asked, "Why didn't you get in touch with me?"

"Because I wanted to go to the White Sun. I wanted that million credits. I didn't believe in the Doomstar, and I didn't connect Seri with it even then. Not till Gurra."

Boker said, "You were following us when you came to Thwayn." Sekma nodded. "How?"

"I was keeping a close eye on everything that moved from Ree Darva. Seri took off in Starbird, and a few days later you took off in Grellah on the identical course. If you'd been anybody else I might not have thought much about it except you'd have poor pickings. But being Johnny's old friend and shipmate Boker, I thought it a remarkable coin-cidence. Particularly after it developed that you had suddenly come into money and laid in a stock of trade goods that were p.r.o.nouncedly Kettrick in choice."

He turned a cold eye on Kettrick. "You're lucky I didn't catch up to you at Gurra. Because I knew what you were up to."

Boker looked curiously at Sekma. "Then you knew all the time he was with us at Thwayn. Why didn't you say some-thing about it? You must have known Flay was hiding him."

"When I was at Gurra," Sekma said, "I talked to Nillaine. She told me that Johnny had been there, and that he was on his way to the White Sun to rob the Krinn. She wanted to be very sure that I would go after him and catch him quickly. It didn't seem right, remembering how Nillaine had used to love him."

Kettrick winced, and Sekma nodded. "It is a pity. There was something wrong about the whole village, something scared and secret. They wouldn't talk about Seri, but they wanted Johnny caught. I suppose they believed that even though you would tell me about the Doomstar, the delay would be enough to guarantee that Seri could accomplish his mission. On top of that, like spiteful children, they wanted you punished."

He turned again to Boker. "When I did find you at Thwayn, and you told that lie about Pellin which you must have known I'd catch, and you had Flay's three sons breath-ing down your neck, it was not sodifficult to imagine what was going on."

He smiled briefly. "At that point, to be blunt about it, you became unimportant. The vital thing was for me to get after Starbird, which I did at the earliest possible mo-ment. I was prepared to fight it out with Flay, using the whole ship's armament if necessary, even though it would have meant the end of you.

Fortunately he believed my story."

"Even so," said Kettrick, "you got to Kirnanoc too late."

"That's right. Silverwing didn't even enter into the picture then. She was gone. All I had was Starbird in the repair dock, her cargo just sold, her crew sitting around waiting for the work to be finished, and Seri...well, Seri was supposedly on his way elsewhere as a pa.s.senger on an Achernan ship, to arrange for new ladings so Starbird wouldn't go home empty. We were shown his name on the list. I began to wonder if I were wrong. I was hoping the Firgals hadn't killed you because there were an awful lot of questions I wanted to ask."

"Then why," said Kettrick, "the h.e.l.l weren't you watch-ing for us?"

"I was. But the minute they got Boker at the board asking for Starbird, they caught his listing and withdrew it, so that it didn't come through. We had no way of knowing that you had landed, or that Boker and the others had been picked up. Under normal circ.u.mstances I would have asked Port Authority to let me know directly you requested a land-ing, and not have waited for the official teletype.

As it was, I didn't dare to call attention to you.

"The Achernans had done everything they could to block and hamper us. They spied on us, tapped our communicator lines and bugged our offices...there were excellent rea-sons for my being in such a hurry to get away. If they'd caught you, Johnny, or if Ssessorn had had just a little more time to add up all the items...the man Chai knocked out under the ship, the cut fence, what you were doing in the Market...I don't think he'd have let us take off, I-C or not."

Hurth had been listening, frowning, occasionally rubbing the still tender scar on his side. Now he said, "Why is it only us, Sekma? Only us against the Doomstar? There's the whole Cl.u.s.ter, and it's their necks as well."

Kettrick said, "Something must have been done since we talked on Earth. Through official channels, I mean...planetary security forces, the I-C, the general intelligence network. You certainly were not depending entirely on one weak reed named Kettrick."

"We've done what we could," Sekma said, "but you know how it goes. On every civilized world the politicians are worrying about the next election, and the intellectuals are terribly busy with their theories on the perfectibility of man-kind, and mankind itself is sitting on its broad duff, stuffing its face and procreating, and none of them want to be both-ered with nasty things like Doomstars. They refuse to be-lieve, just as you did. And the people who do believe in the Doomstar and are actively working for it simply smile blandly and lie to us. So the most we've had is the repeti-tion of rumors we had already heard, and a few leads that didn't go anywhere, or at least were not conclusive enough to warrant any action. Oftentimes the local authorities haven't been too eager to give us information."

He sighed, the weariness and frustration of the past months showing clearly in his face.

"And all the time you're walking on eggsh.e.l.ls, because you don't know. The official, the security man, the tribes-man, the semiape you're talking to, the governor or the curodai...any one of them may be the enemy, and you don't know, not even in the I-C. I can swear that more than once our enquiries have been deliberately buried. There are people like Ssessorn on many worlds, fighting a delaying and beclouding action while they await the Word, and these are the ones who will shout the loudest for surrender when it comes."

"The l.u.s.t for power," said Glevan heavily, "is a greater evil than the l.u.s.t for gold.""Quite," said Sekma, "but of course they don't call it that any more, even to themselves. They do these things for the n.o.blest of motives. Even Ssessorn, I'm sure, would never admit that he's acting out of sheer greed for power and hatred of the human races."

"Well, the h.e.l.l with their motives," said Kettrick. "I'm only interested in beating them. What kind of a thing is it that poisons a star? How is it delivered? You talk about scanning the planet, as though you expect it to be set up on the ground."

"According to the best scientific conjecture...and I a.s.sure you that we've had some of the best brains in the Cl.u.s.ter, the ones we could trust, wringing themselves dry...the launching mechanism would have to be on the ground. It's a seeding operation, apparently. That is to say, the change in the sun is not made at one stroke, but in a number of strokes that continue to stimulate a growing re-action. The theory is that a fairly small launcher is set up, capable of delivering a series of very high-speed missiles. The warheads carry an artificially made cobalt isotope and a catalyst. These react with the cobalt atoms normally pres-ent in the sun and create still another isotope, violently unstable. Up to a certain critical point the action is re-versible. Beyond that point the reaction is self-feeding and the sun turns itself into a gigantic cobalt bomb, destroying all life that may exist for millions of miles around it.

"Obviously, the missiles could not be launched from a ship, because the occupants thereof would fry in their own gamma rays if they waited around for the full operation. If the launcher is on the ground, they can rack up their warheads in an automatic loader and depart in safety."

Kettrick nodded. "All right. Let's get out the charts, then. I know the world of the Krinn probably better than anyone in the Cl.u.s.ter, though that isn't saying much. Maybe we can figure the likeliest spots.

And you could almost double your capability by using the lifeboats as auxiliaries..."

"Not both of them. I'd have to keep one in case we spotted the launcher somewhere that the cruiser couldn't land. But the other one, yes." He got out the charts.

Most of the remainder of the time they were in jump was spent in planning, except for the mealtimes and the sleeptimes, and one time when Kettrick found himself alone with Larith.

She had kept to her cabin a great deal. She had known early on, of course, that they were not bound for Trace. When Sekma told her she had only said, "I am sorry you didn't believe me." And her face had been as masklike and unreadable as Kettrick remembered it that night at Ree Darva. Since then she had hardly spoken, joining the others briefly at meals and then vanishing again, tightly wrapped in a sh.e.l.l of...what? Hurt pride that she had not been trusted, despair that she had failed in her mission? Or was it fear...fear of the Doomstar, of what might happen to Seri, and again, despair that she had failed in her mission? Kettrick didn't know.

When he came upon her unexpectedly in the wardroom she looked at him with eyes so deeply shadowed that he wondered if she had slept at all. "I'm sorry," she mur-mured, and tried to move past him to the door. He caught her and held her.

She was wearing a green I-C coverall, loaned to her so that she might change out of her single dress. He could feel her body through the hard masculine cloth, the beauti-ful body he had once joyed in, softly firm and supple and smoothly curved and vibrantly alive. Now it was rigid under his hand, and the feeling of vibrancy in it was only the all-pervading, nerve-rasping quiver that permeated every fiber during jump, the straining of each separate atom to re-tain its ident.i.ty against a force that willed it to dissolve into chaos.

She brought her head up and said, "Let me go, Johnny. You have nothing to do with me any more.

Nothing."

"I believe you," he said. He did not let her go. She was so close to him that he was aware of her warmth and the faint fragrance of her hair. She was beautiful. Deep inside him he felt something like the stabbing of a knife. "Did you ever love me, Larith?""That's a foolish question, Johnny."