Secret of the Stars (2 page)

1

JetTown, Port of N’Yok, where strange wares were sold for the amusement, fair or foul, of crewmen out of space, and those who preyed upon them, and the elite who took their cut from the predators in turn. There were circles within circles on the streets, an intricate social organization which would have amazed the city dwellers beyond the rigidly drawn, yet physically unmarked, boundaries of that sinister blot edging out in a triangle, its base fronting on the scarred landing aprons, a narrow tongue licking “uptown.”

On the streets a man’s life might depend not only on his wits and toughness of body, but also on the development of a sixth sense of impending trouble. Sometimes an uneasy foreboding swept the whole area. That eerie disturbance was alive tonight, though the hour was early and few of the big spots were fully open.

Kern’s SunSpot was, but the boast of the SunSpot was that it never closed. The air, tossed about but not in any manner really renewed by the conditioners, was tainted with old smoke, the aroma of weird drinks, and the old, old smell of over-crowded humanity. The big central room was as always with Step and Haggy on duty at the bar. A few of the girls were already drifting in.

Yet the young man, seated alone at the star-and-comet table, his counters in a neat rack before him, the unopened packs of kas-cards at his elbow, checked the highly illegal force-blade in the soft folds of the wide silken sash about his flat middle. His shoulders moved under the loose-sleeved jacket which covered his ruffled shirt as if he were flexing his muscles in prelude to some attack. Trouble—he could taste it, smell it—this was going to be a bad night.

He snapped on the play light above the table. Under that carefully adjusted radiance his thin face was that of a boy, wearing the faint, indecisive cast of adolescence, almost of youthful innocence. That face was worth a lot to his employer. Kern valued Joktar for his face, as well as for the keen brain behind it, and the clever, knowing hands which obeyed that brain. Kern trusted his head star-and-comet
dealer as far as he trusted anyone—though that was a limited distance.

Joktar knew that his game was checked at intervals, and that a variety of sly traps had been set for him. A good many dealers in the SunSpot had come to sudden and sometimes messy ends. At least three had been delivered to the Emigration men. Kern had seen to it that all his employees were made fully aware of such object lessons. So far Joktar had run straight, not for any ethical reason since ethics were not learned on the streets, but because playing a straight game with a vip was simply good insurance.

He admired Kern’s executive abilities without developing any personal liking for the man. And so far the boss of the SunSpot was the only stable thing Joktar had known in this dangerous world. He had been at the SunSpot most of the life he could remember, which was a short one for he did not even know how old he was. Though strangers always under-calculated his age by a half a dozen years or more.

Since that peculiarity added to his value to Kern, he welcomed it. Though when some buck lost at the tables and turned nasty he was apt to try to take on the “kid” for an easy smash. Accordingly Joktar had acquired a well-known and respected proficiency with a force blade, and had other knowledge of odd forms of personal combat learned from tutors who had picked them up all around the galaxy. As a result Joktar of the SunSpot was now reckoned one of the deadliest infighters on the streets, though he was no call-out man with a ready challenge.

Click, click,
the counters with their emblazoned stars, their glittering diamond-paint comets, moved under his slender fingers. He built a small tower, lowered it chip by chip. Every nerve of his was responding to the unseen menace—waiting.

“The E-men are out . . .”

That was a whisper from beyond the table light. Joktar glanced up from his pile of counters. Hudd, the banker from the one-two table, stood there. He was a new man, but too much of a pusher. Joktar gave him another week here, perhaps a day or two more, then he’d push too far, ask one question too many and Kern’d take steps. He wasn’t a police plant. So he must be a spotter from one of the other vips; somebody could be planning to pull a climb-up on Kern. Joktar smiled inwardly. How many had tried that game in the past? Almost as many as the counters in his racks. Kern had had a long run and no crack showed yet in his organization.

“They’re sweeping?” he asked Hudd as if it did not matter in the least.

“The growl is that they’re going to make a big pull.”

A big pull. And the news passed to him by Hudd. Joktar added one point to the other. Could this be an oblique warning? Why? Hudd was no friend of his. So why did this newcomer wish to pull any of Kern’s men out of an E-net . . . unless he had a future use for him. Only . . . Joktar had not been approached lately with any offer to change allegiance. He always reported such to Kern, knowing that at least half were tests. This a new one?

“Pass the word.” He stubbed the light button, swept his card packs and counters into the wide drawer of his table and sealed them there with the pressure of his thumb in the lock slot. He stood up, slim, small, boyish, his cool eyes surveying Hudd with aloof speculation.

The other met that stare with a calculating intentness, as if the younger man was a hand held by a too-lucky player. His lips parted as if he would add to his warning. But Joktar had already turned away with the controlled litheness of a blade man, to cross to the lift which served Kern’s private apartment above.

Orrin was on guard aloft. A stocky, solid man, not yet run to seed, trained as a space marine before he left that service under circumstances which made him useful to Kern. Orrin whirled, his blaster half-out of the holster, as Joktar stepped from the anti-grav plate. He laughed a little raggedly, and slapped his weapon back.

“Better sing out on the way up next time, kid. A man can lose half his brain pulling a quiet come-in like that.”

“You got the jumps? Well, the signs are up . . . trouble.”

Orrin’s boots shuffled, his broad face was unusually sober. “Yeah, there’s a few! You got a nudge for the boss?”

“Maybe so, maybe no. Call me in.”

Orrin snapped the lever of the visa-plate, waved Joktar before it. The whirr of the answering buzzer came as a panel slid into the wall. The dealer flipped the force blade from his sash into Orrin’s waiting hand. For anyone to pass Kern’s door armed was to face inanimate sentries who eliminated without question. Human guards could make mistakes, Kern’s last line of defense never did.

“What’s the rumble?”

Kern’s lank form sprawled on an eazee-rest. His voice was soft and the tone came from his thin, concave chest. He was dressed in street finery. His lavishly embroidered, brightly colored clothes did not hide the angular lines of his ungainly body. Similarly, his long, curly, gray-brown hair, and the thatch of sideburns that grew to exaggerated points on his sunken cheeks did nothing to soften his sharp features. He pointed and Joktar sat down on a footstool—a concession.

“Nothing as yet,” the dealer answered the question.

Kern’s silence was an invitation to elaborate.

“I have it that the E-men are on a big pull.”

“Yes,” Kern yawned. “That would stir up the streets. Who spilled? One of our runners?”

“Hudd.”

“Hudd. Well, well, well. Did he make this growl to you personally?”

Joktar smiled, an engaging, boyish expression, until one noted the coolness of his eyes. “He was meant to, wasn’t he?”

He fully expected agreement from Kern. Every time he had spotted one of the boss’ checks, Kern admitted readily enough that the test had been his idea. But this time the other shook his head.

“Not my hand, boy.”

“Hudd’s a plant,” Joktar stated firmly.

“Certainly. But for whom, and why? Such small mysteries make life interesting. We’ll let him run on the string a little longer until we discover who holds the other end. So he made a point of warning you . . .”

“I haven’t had any offers recently.” Something in Kern’s expression brought that out of Joktar, almost against his will, and he felt self-contempt for offering that avowal.

“I know that. How long have you been here? Fourteen . . . no, it must be fifteen years now. And yet you still look like a dewy-eyed kid. I’d like to learn that trick, it’s a neat one for our business. Yes, it was back in ’08 that that doll staggered in here with you pulling her along. You were a smart brat even then. I’d like to know where you came from.”

An old crawling chill touched Joktar. “You had me psyched, didn’t you?”

“Sure. And by a medic who knew his stuff. All he got from you was babble about a big ship and the port here. That doll was queer, too. I sure wish she hadn’t died before Doc could run her through the hoops and really learn something. Doc swore you’d been blocked, that you’d never be able to remember more than he got out of you under a talky shot.”

“Why did you keep me here, Kern?”

“Well, boy, I like puzzles and you’re about the best I’ve ever got my hands on. You grow a little bigger, but slow, and you keep looking like a kid, yet you’ve got a brain that ticks fast and straight and you don’t get smart ideas. You’re about the best dealer I’ve ever seen spread out the cards. You don’t take to dames, nor to rot-gut, nor to happy-smoke. Just you stay the way you are, boy, and we’ll rub along without any flarebacks. So, this growl is that the E-men are out? Set up the house warning.”

Joktar went to the panel of switches on the far wall, pulled three. Throughout the SunSpot now the general alert would go up. Not that Kern should have anything to fear from an E-raid, he paid in enough each quarter to equip fifty colonists and that was a matter of official record.

“Could it be Norwold, I wonder? He’s been reaching lately. If he’s due to get the blast . . .” Kern squirmed out of the soft eazee-rest. “Tip that flutter to Passey, he’s our spotman at Norwold’s tonight. Tell him to be ready to flit if there’s a raid, but also, he’s to watch where Norwold plants those two new dolls—we could use ’em here.”

“Right.” Joktar went out, collecting his blade from Orrin as he passed. He wondered about Kern’s guess that Norwold would be netted. You
could
buy your way out of the E-pens, but the price was so high only a vip or a vip’s favorite could unpocket enough. The E-men raided to obtain the cheap labor needed to open up a frontier planet. Colonists volunteered, passed rigid tests; emigrants were dispatched by force: neither ever returned. To be caught in an E-raid was the most blighting fear which overhung the streets: processed, drugged, sent out in frozen sleep from which some never awakened, to endure slavery on an alien world.

Colonists were heroes. To be an emigrant one merely had to be alive, reasonably healthy, and in possession of an undamaged body—undamaged that was in the sense that one had the proper number of arms and legs. A good many men on happy-smoke went out in deep freeze. Supposing he was netted, would Kern unpocket to get him out of the pens? He doubted it.

Joktar was on the anti-grav plate when the alarms went, setting up a noiseless vibration which tingled through the flesh, nerves and blood of every man and woman under that roof.
Raid, E-raid—here!
So, Hudd had given him a straight growl after all!

He slammed his hand against the controls of the grav-plate, sending it up instead of down. Too late to try to reach the low runs. There was only the roof way.

But he slowed the plate at the third level. What about Kern? Orrin waved him back when he would have gone to the boss’ door.

“Boss says scramble!”

The guard crowded on beside the dealer. Kern, alone, of those in the SunSpot had the power to negotiate with the raiders. But how had his espionage system failed so badly that they had been jumped without any real warning? Was Hudd in E-service? No, he wouldn’t have given a warning if that were true. Joktar asked a question of Orrin. He shrugged. “Don’t ask me where the snap came, kid. For all I know the boss pulled this flareback himself. He didn’t spout any fire when we got the alarm.”

Joktar’s brain chewed that. He could see no possible cause for Kern to open the SunSpot to raiders. On the other hand the boss had a love for the devious which could be satisfied by this roundabout way of removing some subordinates. Joktar thought of the more prominent employees, trying to pick out any Kern might hold in disfavor.