Andre Norton - The X Factor 2

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EVEN NIGHTTIME on Vaanchard was disturbing. It was not a time of peace
in which one could hide. There were gemlike glints in the garden path, a soft
luminescence to the growing things, new scents and— Diskan Fentress hunched
over, his chin almost touching his knees, fingertips thrust into his ears. He
had closed his eyes to his surroundings, too—though there was no way to filter
those scents out of the air he breathed. His mouth worked; he was afraid he
was going to be thoroughly and disastrously sick, right here where his shame
would be public. Not that anyone would let him see their disgust, of course.
The elaborate pretense that Diskan Fentress was one of them would continue and
continue and continue— He swallowed convulsively. The greenish moonlight had
reached the edge of the path now, awaking the glints to crystalline
brilliance. A new fragrance tantalized his nostrils, but not aggressively.
Diskan could not imagine anything in this garden as aggressive. When created
and brought to perfection by the Vaans, a pleasure place was subtle. Diskan
fought a silent struggle against his heaving insides, against the terrible
bonds this garden and the building from which he had fled, this city, this
world, had laid upon him. His trouble reached back farther than just his
coming here to Vaanchard—to a day when Ulken the Overseer had brought a
stranger down to the pond back on Nyborg, had called Diskan out from the murky
water, where he stood up to his middle, green slime smearing his bare body,
and had spoken to him as if he were a-a thing—not a man with feelings and a
mind, if not a body, like his fellows. Now Diskan's breath came in a ragged
sob. His eyes might register the path and the strange growth, if he wanted to
look, all the elfin glory of the night, but he saw the past now. His troubles
had not begun by the pond either, but back down the trail of years. His mouth
shaped a grimace, half a snarl of frustrated rage. Way back, that beginning-He
could not remember any time when he had not been aware of the truth, that
Diskan Fentress was a reject—a badly working piece of human machinery that
could be turned only to the simplest and dirtiest of jobs. He did not know how
to use the outsize share of strength in his poorly coordinated body, breaking
when he wanted to mend or cherish. And his mind functioned almost as
badly—slowly and stupidly. Why? How many times had he demanded that in the
past, ever since he could think and wonder at all! But he had learned quickly
not to ask it of anyone but himself—and that impersonal power that might or
might not have had a hand in his misf ashioning. Back on Nyborg he had—would
they say—"adjusted"? At least being used for the brute-strength jobs left him
mostly to himself during the day, and that was escape of a kind, something he
did not have here. Then, in spite of shrinking from that memory, Diskan
thought again of the scene by the pond. Ulken, filthy, coarse, but still
judged infinitely higher in the community scale than Diskan, standing there, a
sly grin on his face, shouting as if his victim were deaf in addition to all
the rest. And the man with him—Diskan closed his eyes, licked his lips before
he swallowed again, willing himself not to—no, no! That man, lithe, of middle
height, all feline grace and ease, his fine body well displayed in the
brown-green uniform of Survey, the silver comet of a First-in Scout on his
breast! The stranger had looked so clean, so close to the ideal of Diskan's
haunted dreams that he had simply stared at him, not answering Ulken's shouted
orders—until he saw that blackness on the Scout's face, just before the Scout
had turned on Ulken. The overseer had shriveled and backed off. But when the
Scout had looked at Disken once more, Ulken had grinned, maliciously, before
he slouched away. "You are—Diskan Fentress?" Disbelief, yes, there had been
disbelief in that, enough to awaken in Diskan some of the old defiance. He had
waded out of the water, pulling up fistfuls of coarse grass to rub the slime
from him. "I'm Fentress." "So am I. Renfry Fentress." Diskan had not really
understood, not for a whole moment of suspended time. He had gone right on
wiping his big clumsy body. Then he answered with the truth as he had known
it. "But you're dead!" "There's sometimes a light-year stretch between
presumption and actuality," the Scout had replied, but he continued to stare.
And a small hurt, hidden far inside Diskan's overgrown frame of flesh and
bone, grew. What a meeting between father and son! But how could Renfry
Fentress have sired—him? Scouts, assigned for periods of time to planet duty,
were encouraged to contract Service marriages. This grew from the need to
breed a type of near mutant species necessary to carry on the exploration of
the galaxy. Certain qualities of mind and body were inherited, and those types
were encouraged to reproduce their kind. So, Renfry Fentress had taken Lilha
Clyas as his wife on Nyborg, for the duration of his assignment there, a
recognized and honored association, with a pension for Lilha and a promising
future for any children of their union. In due time, Renfry Fentress had been
reassigned. He then formally severed the marriage by Decree of Departure and
raised ship, without knowing whether there would be a child, since his orders
were a matter of emergency. Eight months later Diskan had been born, and in
spite of the skill of the medics, it had been a hard birth, so hard that his
mother had not survived his arrival. He did not remember the early days in the
government creche, but the personality scanner had reported almost at once
that Diskan Fentress was not Service material. Some- thing had gone wrong in
all that careful planning. He was like neither his father nor his mother, but
a retrocession, too big, too clumsy, toe slow of thought and speech to be
considered truly one of a space-voyaging generation. There had been other
tests, many of them. He could not recall them separately now, only that they
were one long haze of frustration, mental pain, discouragement, and sometimes
fear. For some years, while he had been a small child, he had been tested
again and again. The authorities could not believe that he was as imperfect a
specimen as the machines continued to declare. Then he had refused to be so
tried again, running away twice from the creche school. Finally one of the
authorities, after a week of breakage, sullen rages, and violence, had
suggested assigning him to the labor pool. He had been thirteen then, larger
than most full-grown men. They had been just a little afraid of him. Diskan
had a flash of satisfaction when he remembered that. But he had known better
than to try to settle problems with his fists. He had no desire to be
condemned to personality erasure. He might be stupid, but he was still Diskan
Fentress. So he had gone from one heavy work job to the next, and the years
had passed—five, six? He was not quite sure. Then Renfry Fentress had come
back to Nyborg, and everything had changed—for the worse, certainly for the
worse! From the beginning. Diskan had been suspicious of this father out of
space. Renfry had shown no disappointment, no outward sign, after that first
moment of blank survey at their meeting, that he thought his son a failure.
Yet Diskan knew that all this existed behind the other's apparent acceptance.
Renfry's attitude became only another "why," giving Diskan almost the same
torture as the first "why" had always held. Why did Renfry Fentress take such
trouble to search out a son he had never seen? When Diskan had been born and
his mother had died, the Scout had been traced by the Service as was the
regulation, so that he might express his wishes concerning the future of his
child. And the answer had come back, "Missing, presumed dead," an epitaph for
many a First-in Scout. But Fentress had not died in the black wastes of space,
where a meteor hit had doomed his ship to drift. Instead, lie had been picked
up by an alien explorer, outward bound on a quest similar to his own, the hunt
for planets to be occupied by a rapidly expanding race. And among the people
of his rescuer, Renfry had found a home, a new wife. When he was again able to
establish contact with his own people, he had received the now years-old
report of his son's birth. Since his new marriage, happy as it was, could have
no offspring, he had hunted that son, eager to bring him to Vaanchard, where
Renfry had taken his optional discharge. Vaanchard was wonder, beauty, the
paradise long dreamed of by Renfry's species. Its natives were all grace,
charm, intelligence governed by imagination—a world without visible flaw,
until Renfry brought his son to shatter the peace of his household, not once
but many times overl Diskan dropped his hands from his ears, suffering the
discomfort of sound. He held them up to survey the calloused palms, the
roughened fingers. In spite of soothing lotions, the fingertips could still
snag fine garments, window hangings, any bit of fabric he touched. They could
smash, too, as they had tonight! There was a smear of blood across the ball of
his right thumb. So he had more than memory to remind him of what had happened
back there, where the bell-toned notes were rising and falling in a wistful
pattern of music that was not human but that sang in the heart, was a part of
the body. Light, sound, and, now that he had unplugged his ears, he could hear
laughter. It was not aimed at him. They were so kind, so intuitive. They did
not use laughter as a. weapon; they did not use any weapons. They only
overlooked, forgave, made allowances for him—eternally they did that! If he
could only hate them as he had hated Ulken and his like! There was a fuel in
hatred to feed a man's strength, but he could not hate Drustans, nor Rixa, nor
Eyinada, their mother and now his father's wife. You cannot hate those who are
perfect by your standards; you can only hate yourself for being what you are.
The movement of his fingers enlarged the bead of blood on his thumb. It
trickled sluggishly, and Diskan licked it away. "Deesskaann?" The Lilting song
of his name—Rixa! She would come and find him. There would be no mention of
shards of gem blue on the white floor. No one would ever mention again a
priceless wonder that had been reduced to splinters in an instant after
centuries of treasuring. If they had raged, if they had once said what he knew
they thought— that would make it easier. Now Rixa would want him to go back
with her. No! Diskan stood up. The carved bench swayed. He watched with a
second of detached acceptance— was that about to crash into ruins, too? Then
he stepped behind the seat, moving with the exaggerated care that had been a
part of him ever since he had come to Vaanchard, knowing at the same time it
would be no use, that he would trample, smash, blunder, that wreckage would
mark any path he would take through this dream world. He could not retreat to
his own quarters; he had done that too many times in the past few days. They
would look for him there first. Nor could he continue to hide out in the
garden with Rixa on the hunt. Diskan surveyed the lighted building. Music, the
coming and going of forms before all those windows, no hiding place unless—
One darkened room on the lower floor— He made a hurried count to place those
two windows. He could not be sure, but they were dark and drew him, as a hurt
animal might search out a hollow log for temporary shelter. The tide of his
misery ebbed a little as he bent his mind to the problem of reaching that
promised retreat undetected. Clumps of bushes dotted the ground, and he could
avoid the one glowing statue. Under the music and voices from the house, he
heard the trilling call of a night flying varch. A varch! With a little luck—
"DeesskaannF* Rixa was on the path not far from the bench. He made for the
next bush and crouched behind it. Now he centered a fierce concentration on
the varch, visualizing the wide green wings with their tipping of gem dust,
which created a filmy aura when it flew, the slender neck, the top-knotted
head. Varch— Diskan thought varch, tried to feel varch. Suddenly that call
sounded to his right, beginning as a trill and ending in a squeak of terror.
The green body flashed out of the shadow, winged toward the path. Diskan heard
a second startled cry—from Rixa. But he was on the move, slipping from one bit
of cover to the next, until he stood under the nearest of those dark windows,
reaching up for the sill. No mistake now—no clumsy fall. Please, no break—just
let him get into the dark and the solitude he must have! And for once, one of
his formless prayers was answered. Diskan spilled through the window to the
floor, the sweep of curtains veiling him. He sat there, panting, not with
physical effort, but with the strain of steeling himself to master his body.
It was several seconds before he parted the curtains to inspect the room. A
single low light let him see that he had taken refuge where indeed they might
not look for him—the room that was Renfry's. Here were kept the travel disks
from his Scout trips, the trophies from his star wandering, all mounted and
displayed. It was a room that Diskan had never before had the courage to enter
on his own. On his hands and knees, he crawled from behind the curtains, to
sit crouched in the middle of the open space, far from anything he could brush
against or knock over. He laced his heavy arms about his upthrust knees and
looked about him. A man's life was in this room. What kind of showing would
his life make if the remnants of his passing were set on shelves for viewing?
Broken bits and pieces, smudged and torn fabrics—and the slow, stupid words,
the wrong actions that would not be tangible but that made smudges and tears
inside himself and others. Diskan's hands went up again to his head, not to
muffle the sighing music, the hum of voices from beyond walls and door, but to
rub back and forth across his forehead, as if to ease the dull ache that had
been ever present during his waking hours on Vaanchard. But he did not seem
stupid to himself, at least not until he tried to translate into action or
words what he thought—as if inside him there was a bad connection so that he
could never communicate clearly with his own body, let alone with those about
him. There were things he could do! Diskan's mouth for the first time in hours
relaxed from the wry twist, even shaped a shadow smile that would have
surprised him had he at that moment faced a mirror. Yes, he could do some
things, and not, he thought, too clumsily either. That varch now— he had
thought of the varch, and then he had thought of what it must do—and it had
done it just as he wished, and with more speed and skill than his own hands
carried out any of his brain's commands. That had happened before, when he was
alone. He had never dared try it before others, since he was rated as strange
enough without that additional taint of wrongness. He could communicate with
animals—which probably meant he was far closer to them than to his own kind,
that he was a slip-back on the climbing path of evolution. But the varch had
distracted Rixa for the necessary moments. Diskan relaxed. The room was still,
the sounds of merriment more muffled here than in the garden. And this chamber
was less alien in its appointments than any other in the huge palace dwelling.
The rich fabrics at the window were native, but their colors were not so muted
here. They were warmer. And save for one lacy spiral object on the wide
desk-table, there were none of the fragile native ornaments. The rack of
travel disks might have been taken out of a spacer—perhaps it had been. He
studied that rack, his lips shaping numbers as he counted the disks, each in
its own slot. More than a hundred worlds—keys to more than a hundred
worlds—all visited at some time or another by Renfry Fentress. And any one of
those, fitted into the auto-pilot of a spacer could take a man to that
world-Blue tapes first—worlds explored by Fentress, now open for
colonization—ten of those, a record of which to be proud. Yellow disks—worlds
that would not support human life. Green—inhabited by native races, open for
trade, closed to human settlement. Red—Diskan eyed the red. There were three
of those at the bottom of the case. Red meant unknown—worlds on which only one
landing had been made, reported, but not yet checked out fully as useful or
otherwise. Empty of intelligent life, yes, possible for human life as to
climate and atmosphere, but planets that posed some kind of puzzle. What could
such puzzles be, Diskan speculated, for a moment pulled from his own concerns
to wonder. Any one of a hundred reasons could mark a world red—to await
further exploration. Keys to worlds—suppose one could use one? Diskan's hands
dropped again to his knees, but his ringers crooked a little. That thinking,
which was clear until he tried to translate it into action, picked at him. A
blue world—another Nyborg or Vaanchard. A green-no, he had no desire to face
another alien race, and his landing on such a planet would be marked at once.
Yellow, that was death, escape of a sort, but he was too young and still not
desperate enough to think seriously of that final door. But those three red—
His tongue crossed his lips. For a long while he had drawn into himself,
refused to initiate action that always ended in failure for him. There was a
key to be used only by a very reckless man, one who had nothing to lose.
Diskan Fentress could be considered as such. He could never be content on
Vaanchard. All he asked or wanted was what they would not grant him—solitude
and freedom from all they were and he could not be. But could he do it? There
was the tape, and outside this house, not too far away, was the port. On that
landing space were berthed small, fast spacers. For once his background would
be an asset. Who would believe that the stupid off-worlder would contemplate
stealing a ship when he had no pilot training, when the control quarters of a
small ship would be so cramped for his hulking body? It was a stupid plan, but
he was stupid. Diskan did not get to his feet. Intent even now on making no
sound, no move that might betray him, on all fours like the animal he believed
he was, he reached the tape rack. His big hand hovered over the three red
disks. Which? Not that it mattered. His fingers closed about the middle one,
transferred it to a belt pocket—but that left an easily noticeable gap. Diskan
made a second shift at the rack; now that gap was at the end of the row, in
the shadow. If he had any luck at all, it might not be noticed for some time.
He was rising when he heard it, the click of the door latch. Two steps would
carry him to cover. Dared he take them? But again, for once, body and brain
worked together. He did not stumble over his own feet, lurch against the table
to send the ornament crashing, or make any other mistake; he got safely behind
the window curtains before the door opened. NOTHWITHSTANDING the half light,
the figure that entered shimmered. Frost stars glinted from a wide collar,
from a belt of state. Drustans! Diskan flattened himself still closer to the
window frame, felt it bite painfully into his thighs, tried to breathe as
shallowly as possible. Rixa was bad enough, but to confront Drustans, her
brother, would be a double defeat. The Vaan youth moved with all the grace of
his land to the desk-table and hesitated there for an instant. Diskan expected
him at any moment to wheel, face the window, and draw the skulker out of
hiding by the very force of his will. There would be no change in the grave
concern of his expression, of course. He would continue to be correct, always
able to do the proper thing at the proper time and to do it well. A small
smolder of dull anger still glowed in Diskan, perhaps fed by the fact that in
this room he had been able to make a decision, to carry it through without
mishap. To surrender now to Drustans would be a special sourness. But if the
Vaan had come for Diskan, nosed him out in some manner—and Diskan was willing
to concede that these aliens had powers he did not understand—then Drustans
was not making the right moves, for his pause by the table had been only
momentary. He went on now to kneel at the tape rack. Diskan's own hand pressed
against the belt pocket. Did— could Drustans have picked, out of the air, the
theft? Yes, the Vaan's hand was at the slots of the red tapes! But why-how-?
Drustans plucked out one of the disks—the very one Diskan had moved to fill
the empty space. Still on his knees,-the Vaan tapped the disk with a
forefinger and studied it. Then he tucked it into a belt pocket and, as
quickly and silently as he had come, left the room. Diskan drew a deep breath.
So, he had not been after him but had come after the tape. And that could mean
trouble because of the switch in disks. Suppose Renfry had sent his alien
stepson to get the tape for reference. There were at least three men here
tonight who would be interested in information on "red" planets—a Free-Trader
captain, Isin Ginzar; an attache from the Zacathan embassy, Zlismak; and
another retired Scout, Bazilee Alpern. And once the mistake was discovered,
Renfry would come here—which meant either Diskan must move at once, tonight,
or he faced just another ignominious failure, with more shame and humiliation.
He could replace the disk in another slot, let them believe a mistake had been
made in filing, which was easy enough—but he could not make himself cross
those few feet and put back his key, relinquish his plan. He had accomplished
this all himself, thought it out, done it. And he was going to follow
through—he had to! There was nothing he wanted to take with him from this
house but that which was already in his belt. It was night. Once out of the
garden, he could easily get to the space port. He knew the geography of this
small strip of territory well enough. And, Diskan realized, if he did not
attempt escape now, he never would; he could not nerve himself to another try.
He swung through the window. The garden was a triangle, its narrowest point
extending out from the house, and that point gave access to a side street. He
looked down at himself. There was a smudge across the breast of his tunic. He
was never able to wear clothing for more than a few moments without collecting
stains or tears. Luckily, he was dressed very plainly for a feast day, no
frost-star collar, none of the splendor Drustans and the other Vaans
considered fitting. He might be taken for a port laborer, wandering lost, if
he were sighted. With caution, Diskan worked his way to the spear point of the
triangle. The house was very much alight, but it was close to midnight, and
they would be serving supper in the banquet hall. Rixa must have long since
given up the search for him in the garden. He must use well what time he had.
Somehow he scrambled over the lacework of the wall, meant more as a frame for
the garden than any barrier. One sleeve tore loose from the shoulder, and now
he had a smarting scratch, oozing blood, above his elbow. His dress boots made
no sound on the pavement. Their soft soles were thin enough to let him feel
the stone. But that did not matter-he had gone barefoot so long that his feet
were tougher perhaps than the fabric of the boots themselves. This way—to the
corner, then to the first side turning— and that led straight to the port. He
would enter quite far from the small ships he wanted, but once he was actually
at the field, he could manage. This sudden small self-confidence was heady.
Just as in the old tales, you obtained a talisman of sorts and then you were
invincible. He had his talisman in the belt pocket, beneath his hand, and now
there bubbled inside of him the belief that the rest would follow, that he
would find the ship and escape-Such a spacer would be on two controls, one for
manual and one for travel tape. Diskan scowled as he tried to remember small
details. All ships took off by pattern, and he dared not ask the Control for a
particular one. So, he would have to risk the other way—feed in his tape, set
on auto-control, go into freeze himself—and just hope. And the steps for
that—? Well, Renfry, striving hard to find a common interest between them back
on Nyborg while they had been waiting for exit papers, had talked about
himself and his work when he discovered Diskan uncommunicative. And Diskan had
listened, well enough now, he hoped, to get him off Vaanchard. The field was
lighted in one section. A liner must have just set down within the hour, as
there was activity about one sky-pointing ship. Diskan watched closely and
then moved forward, walking with a sureness of purpose. He paused by a pile of
shipping cartons and hoisted one to his shoulder, then set out briskly on a
course that angled toward his goal. To the casual glance, he hoped, he would
be a laborer—one of those selected for the handling of cargo for which
machines could not be trusted. He dared not stumble—he must keep his mind on
those slim small ships in their cradles ahead. He must think of his arms, of
his feet, of his unruly body, and of what he was going to do when he got
inside a space lock. He would mount to the control cabin, strap in, feed the
tape disk to the directive, then set the freeze needle, take the perlim
tablets— Diskan was under the shadow of a trader before he thought it safe to
dump his burden and quicken his pace to a trot. The first two of the smaller
ships were still too large for his purpose, but the third, a racer made more
for use within this solar system, between Vaanchard and her two inhabitable
neighbors, was better—though he did not know if it could be used to voyage in
deep space. However, such a ship could be set for maximum take-off, to wrench
him out of the influence of the control tower. And speed was an important
factor. For such a ship there would be a watch robot. Theft was not a native
vice on Vaanchard, but all ports had a floating population of which a certain
portion was untrustworthy. No racer was ever left without a watch robot. But
Diskan had some useful information from Nyborg, learned by watching his
companions at the labor depot. Robots were the enemies of the strong-back
boys. When rations were scanty or poor, the human laborers had learned ways to
circumvent the mechanical watchdogs at warehouses—though it was a tricky
business. Diskan glanced at his big, calloused hands. He had never tried to
dis-con a watcher before. That was a task he had believed he was too clumsy to
handle, but tonight he was going to have to do it! He studied the ship in the
launching cradle carefully. The port was closed, the ladder up, and the
watcher would control both of those. But a watcher was not only there to check
invasion; it was also attuned to any change in the ship. Diskan swung down
into the cradle, put where the port inspectors had their scan-plate. He forced
himself to move slowly. There must be no mistake in the false set of the dial
he wanted. Sweat beaded his cheeks and chin when he achieved that bit of
manipulation. Up out of the pit—to wait. A grating noise from above marked the
opening port. The ladder fed out smoothly. This was itl Diskan tensed. The
watch robot, once out of the ship, would sense him instantly, come for him. A
watcher could not kill or even do bodily harm; it only captured and held its
prisoner to be dealt with by human authority. And Diskan must allow himself to
be so captured to serve his purpose. There was a clatter; the robot swung down
the ladder and turned quickly to rush him. A thief would have run, tried to
dodge. Diskan stood very still. The first rush of the machine slackened. It
might have been disconcerted by his waiting for it, wondering if he had some
legitimate reason to be there. Now if he had known the code word of its
conditioning, he would have had nothing in the world to fear, but he did not
have that knowledge. A capture net whirled out, flicked about him, drew Diskan
toward the machine; and he went without struggling. The net, meant to handle a
fighter, was loose about him. He was almost up to his captor when he
sprang—not away from but toward the robot. And for the first time that Diskan
could remember, his heavy bulk of body served him well. He crashed against the
machine, and the force of that meeting rocked the robot off balance. It went
down, dragging Diskan with it, but his arm was behind its body, and before
they had rolled over, he had thrust one forefinger into the sensitive
direction cell. Pain such as he had never known, running from his finger up
his arm to the shoulder—the whole world was a haze of that pain. But somehow
Diskan jerked away, held so much to his purpose that he had dragged himself
part way up the ladder before his consciousness really functioned clearly
again. Those who had told him of this trick had always used a tool to break
the cell. To do it by finger was lunacy on a level they would not have
believed possible. Diskan, racked with pain, stumbled through the hatch.
Sweating and gasping, he got to his feet, slammed his good hand down on the
close button, and then swayed on—up one more level. The wall lights glowed as
he went, obeying the command triggered by his body heat. He had a blurred
glimpse of the cradle of the pilot's seat and half fell into it. Somehow he
managed to lean forward, to fumble the disk out of his pocket and into the
auto-pilot, to thumb down the controls. The spacer came to We and took over.
Around Diskan arose the cradle of the seat. His injured hand was engulfed in a
pad that appeared out of nowhere. He felt the stab of a needle as the tremble
of the atomics began to vibrate the walls. Diskan was already half into freeze
and did not hear, save as a blur of meaningless words, the demand broadcast as
those in Control suddenly realized an unauthorized take-off was in progress.
He was under treatment for an injured pilot as the racer made its dart, at
maximum, up from Vaanchard on the guide of the red tape. To a man in freeze,
time did not exist. Measure of it began again for Diskan with a sharp,
demanding clang, a noise biting at his very flesh and bones. He fought the
pressure of that noise, the feeling of the necessity for responding to it.
Opening his eyes wearily, he found himself facing a board of levers, switches,
flashing lights. Two of those lights were an ominous red. Diskan knew nothing
of piloting, but the smooth beat of the Scout ship that had taken him to
Vaanchard in his father's company was lacking. There was instead a pulsation,
an ebb and flow of power on a broken beat. Another light turned red.
"Condition critical!" Diskan's head jerked against the padded surface of the
cradle. The words were mechanical and came out of the walls around him.
"Damage to the fifth part. Going on emergency for landing! Repeat: going on
emergency for landing!" Substance spun out of the wall to his left. In the air
it seemed a white mist. Settling on and about his body, it thickened, became a
coating of cushioning stuff, weaving him into a cocoon of protective covering.
The trembling beat in the walls was even more uneven. Diskan knew that an
emergency landing might well end in a crash that would erase ship and
passenger on the instant of impact. His helplessness was the worst. Simply to
lie there in the covering spun by the ship to protect human life and wait for
extinction was a torture. He struggled against the bonds of his padding—to no
purpose. Then he yelled his need for freedom to the walls pressing in on him
as his screams echoed from them. Mercifully, black closed about Diskan then,
and there was an end to waiting. He was not conscious of the fact the ship had
entered planetary atmosphere, that the journey tape guided a crippled ship
down to the surface of the unknown world. The spinning ball of the planet lost
the anonymity imposed by distance. Shadows of continents, spread of seas now
showed on its surface, appeared waveringly on the visa-plate above Diskan's
head. A dark world, a world with a certain forbidding aspect, not welcoming
with lush green like Vaan- chard or with brown-green like Nyborg—this was a
gray-green, a slate or steel-hued world. Orbiting, the spacer passed from
night to day, to night, in a weird procession of telescoping time. There was a
sun, more pallid here, and five moons shedding a wan reflected light on
saw-toothed heights, which formed spiny backs of firm land above morasses of
swamp and fen, where the shallow seas and land eternally thieved, one from the
other. There were eyes that witnessed the passage of the ship drawing closer
to the surface of the world. And there was intelligence—of a sort—behind those
eyes, assessing, wondering. Movement began over a relatively wide space—an
ingathering such as was not natural, perhaps an abortive ingathering, or
perhaps, this time— Eyes watched as the spacer, poised uneasily on its tail of
flames, began the ride down via deter rockets to a small safety of rock and
earth. The descent was not clean. One tube blew. Instead of a three-fin
landing, the spacer crashed, rolled. Vegetation flamed into a holocaust during
that crazy spin. Death of plant or animal came in an instant. Then the broken
hulk was still, lying on mud that bubbled and shifted around it, allowing it
to settle into its glutinous substance. For the second time, Diskan roused.
The dying ship, in a last spasmodic effort, strove for the safety of the Me it
had guarded to the best of the ability its designers had devised. The cocoon
of which he was the core was propelled from the pilot's seat, struck against a
hatch that lifted part way and then stuck. The stench of the mud and the
burned vegetation brought him to, coughing weakly. Wisps of torn white stuff
blew around his head and shoulders. The fear of being bound and helpless,
which had carried over from those seconds before his last blackout, set Diskan
to a convulsive effort, which scraped him through the half-open hatch, meant
for the emergency escape. He went head first into the mud, but his shoulder
and side jarred brutally against stone, the pain bringing him around. Somehow
he scrambled over stuff that slid and sucked at him until there was solid
support under his flailing arms, and he drew himself up on an island in the
midst of that instability. Clawing the remains of the cocoon padding from his
head, Diskan stared about wildly. The spacer was three quarters under the
sucking mud, a flood of which was now tonguing in the hatch through which he
had come. Diskan tried to gain some idea of his present surroundings. The wind
was cold, though the smoldering swamp vegetation still gave off a measure of
heat. But the fire ignited by the ship was already dying. Not too far away
Diskan saw white patches, which he thought might be snow, on a rising spine of
rocks. He had known winter on Nyborg and winds as chill as the one now lapping
about his body. But on Nyborg there had been clothing, shelter, food— Diskan
gathered up the torn stuff of the cocoon and drew it about his shoulders,
shawl fashion. It made an awkward-to-handle covering, but it was a protection.
The ship! There should be a survival kit in that—means of making fire, iron
rations, weapons—I Diskan slewed around on his rock perch. There was no hope
of returning to the ship. The flood of mud had poured relentlessly into the
open hatch; to try to return was to be trapped. Suddenly he wanted solid land,
a lot of it, around and under him. And the best place for finding such a perch
was the snow-streaked rocky spine. It must have been late afternoon when the
ship crashed, for though there had been no sunlight, there had been the gray
of a cloud-cast day to light the scene. But by the time Diskan, exhausted,
smeared with icy slime and almost hopeless, reached his goal, it was well into
twilight, and he dared not try to move farther, lest a misstep plunge him into
the bog into which the ship had now totally disappeared. He crawled along the
broken rock of the ridge, at last wedging himself into a crevice, where he
pulled the cocoon fabric about him. The first moon was up, a round green-blue
coin against the sky, and its following sister was above the horizon. But
neither gave light enough for further travel over unknown territory. There
were reddish coals on the other side of the mud pool, marking the blaze.
Diskan longed for a few of those precious sparks now. But there was no fuel to
feed them here and no way of crossing to the burned-over land. He squirmed as
far as he could into his shelter, misery eating into him. So—one part of his
mind jeered—you thought luck would change when you used your key, that you
could make a better future. Well, here is that future, and in what way is it
better than the past? Diskan coughed, shivered, and chewed on that bitter
thought. He had his freedom, probably freedom to die one way or another—by
freezing tonight, by slipping into the mud tomorrow, by a thousand and one
traps on an unknown planet. But another thought warred against the jeering
voice —he had survived so far. And every moment he continued to live was a
small victory over fate—fate or something that had crippled him from his
birth. He had this freedom—yes —and his life, and those were two things to
hold fast to this night as if they could give him warmth, shelter, and
nourishment.
DISKAN FEARED the insidious chill as the night wore on. He crawled at
intervals from the crevice to stamp his numbed feet and beat his arms across
his chest. To sleep in this creeping cold was perhaps not to wake again. And
each time he so emerged from his poor shelter, he strove to view by the light
of those hurrying moons just what lay about him. The rocky point rose in a
series of outcrops back and up in a miniature mountain chain. As far as he
could tell, the rest was bog. Twice he heard a howling from the path the
rolling ship had blasted, and once a snarling, growling tumult, as if two
fairly well-matched opponents struggled. Perhaps the flamed land held food
that attracted scavengers. Food— Diskan's middle reacted to the thought. He
had often known the bite of hunger in the past, his big frame requiring more
substance than had been allowed on several work projects, but he could not
remember ever feeling this emptyl Food, water, shelter, covering against the
wind and the cold—and all must be found in a world where even one mouthful of
an alien plant or animal could mean sudden death for an off-worlder. The
rations that might have sustained him, the immunity shots meant to carry the
shipwrecked through such a disaster—all were gone. Howling again—and closer.
Diskan stared out across the mud pool to that shore where the embers
smoldered. There were shadows there, too many of them, and they could hide
anything. How long did night last on this world? Time had no meaning when one
could not measure it by any known rule. It began to snow—first in a few flakes
that filtered into his crevice to melt on his skin, then more thickly, until
Diskan could not see much but a curtain of white. But with the coming of the
snow, the wind died. He watched the storm dully. If this drifted, it would
cover the bog and make a treacherous coat to hide the mud. A sharp cry jerked
Diskan out of a half stupor. That— that had come from the outcrops behind his
refuge! He listened. The swish of the falling snow seemed deafening, as
deafening as his fingers had been in his ears back on Vaanchard. Moments
passed. The cry was not repeated. But Diskan knew that he had not been
mistaken—he had heard a living thing give voice out there. A hunter—or the
hunted? Had that been the death cry of some prey? Panic was colder in him than
the chill born of the rock walls about his shivering body. Every nerve cried,
"Run!" And yet his mind fought down that fear. Here he had to face only the
narrow opening to the white world; he could defend that opening with his two
hands if necessary, whereas in the open he might speedily be pulled down. Time
can dull even the sharpest fear, Diskan discovered. There was no second cry.
And, though he listened, there were no more sounds out of the night. Finally,
before he realized it, there was a slow end to night itself. Diskan knew it
first when he was aware he could see farther. The snow was spread in a wide
cover, broken by patches of dark which must mark the liquid surface of the
mud. That rocky far shore lost some of its shadows and was growing clearer by
the moment. Though no sun showed, day was coming. He pulled at the tattered
stuff of the cocoon. It was as white, save for a mud stain here and there, as
the snow. And he thought he could knot it into a kind of cloak. His ringers
were cold and twice as clumsy as usual, but he persisted until he had a crude
rectangle he could pull about his shoulders, anchoring the ends under his
belt. The mud through which he had wallowed on his escape from the ship had
dried on skin and clothing into a harsh blue shell, which cracked and scaled
as he moved but which might give him additional protection against the cold.
Most of all he needed food. Recklessly, he had scooped snow from about the
crevice and sucked it so that its moisture relieved his thirst. But, as he
wavered out of his crack of shelter and down to the edge of the mud pool in a
very faint hope of seeing some part of the ship, he faced only a blue surface
rimmed with brittle ice-coated stalks of vegetation on one side and a
blackened smear on the other. It was a small thing to catch the eye, a wisp of
yellow-white from that black scar. Smokel Diskan took a quick step forward and
then paused. There might be a still-burning coal over there, but traps lay in
between. "Steady—" he told himself, and the spoken words somehow were as
comforting as if they had come from lips other than his own chapped ones.
"Slow—steady—" Mud cracked and fell from his shoulders as he turned his head,
tried to assess what lay to the right and how far toward the burned ground his
present solid footing extended. Stiffly, forcing himself to study each step
before he advanced, Diskan climbed around the rocks. The cold of the stone was
searing to his hands until he halted, worried loose some strips of the cocoon
material, and tied them about his palms. Meant to insulate, it served for
protection, though it made his hands more bulky and threatened his holds. He
pulled to the top of one of the rocky pillars and had his first less limited
view of his present surroundings. The spine became part of a larger ridge,
perhaps the main body of land. Diskan could see the blackened scar of the
ship's crash ahead of him. There were spots of the ominous blue mud and
tangles of frozen vegetation, but there were also scattered rocks, which
provided stepping stones. "Slow—" Diskan warned himself. "To the right—that
block there—that mat of brush—it ought to hold. Then that other rock— Easy
nowl Hand hold here—put the foot there—" He could not have told why it was
easier to move when he gave himself such orders, as if his body were apart
from his mind, but it was. So he kept on talking, outlining each footstep
before he took it. The patches of white snow, he learned, marked more solid
footing, but caution made him test each. And once a Stone, hurled ahead,
proved that caution wise, for the rock cracked through the surface and a blue
earth mouth sucked it down. He had set foot on the black crisp of the burn,
felt and smelled the powdery black ashes his weight disturbed, when a cry
startled him, brought his attention to the sky. A winged thing swooped and
fluttered, the morning light making its coloring a vivid streak, for it was
rawly red, with a long neck that turned and twisted in a serpentine fashion, a
head with a sharply peaked comb or topknot. And it was big. Diskan estimated
that wing spread to equal his own height. With a second screech, it planed
down—but not at him. It headed on into the heart of the burn smear. Then there
came another cry, and a second red flier appeared, to settle at the same spot.
Diskan hesitated. The smoke lay in that direction, but he did not like the
look of those birds, if birds they were. And several of them together could
offer trouble. More squawking ahead. There was a small ridge between Diskan
and where they had landed. Now a squall—the same as he had heard earlier in
the night—sounds of what could only be a fight. Diskan went on, and from the
top of the ridge he looked down into a battlefield from which the morning wind
brought a stench that made him gag. Things lay there where the flames had
struck them down. The bodies had been so crisped that he could not tell more
than that they were the bodies of large creatures. On the side of the biggest,
one of the red fliers had taken a stand, its long neck writhing as it strove
to strike with a sword-sharp beak at a smaller four-footed creature that
snarled, squalled, showed teeth, and refused to be driven from its feasting.
There were four, five—eight at least of its kind—and they moved with a
rapidity that seemed to baffle the birds. Then one of the defenders grew too
bold or too reckless. That rapier beak stabbed and stabbed again. The creature
fell back in a limp curl, between the bones where it had been tearing at
charred flesh. The victory appeared to hearten the red flier. Its neck curved,
and it opened its beak to voice an ear-splitting honk. From the air it was
answered. Three, four more of its kind flapped into view. The animals about
the carcasses snarled and complained, but they retreated, their rage apparent
摘要：

EVENNIGHTTIMEonVaanchardwasdisturbing.Itwasnotatimeofpeaceinwhichonecouldhide.Thereweregemlikeglintsinthegardenpath,asoftluminescencetothegrowingthings,newscentsand—DiskanFentresshunchedover,hischinalmosttouchinghisknees,fingertipsthrustintohisears.Hehadclosedhiseyestohissurroundings,too—thoughthere...

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