Andre Norton - Secret of the Lost Race

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2024-12-24 0 0 294.8KB 120 页 5.9玖币
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Secret of the Lost Race
by Andre Norton
Confidential: X3457-A-R-
From: Kronfeld. Director, Colonization Project 308 To: Lennox,
Commander, Space Scouts, Fifth Sector, Detached Rating. Subject:
Service Files. Require release to this department service files for following:
O-S-S-D 451 Marson, H. Deceased.
O-S-S-D 489 Ksanga, V.T. Deceased.
Confidential: X3457-A-R- Reply
From: Lennox, Commander, Space Scouts, Fifth Sector, Detached
Rating
To: Kronfeld, Director, Colonization Project 308 Subject: Service Files
Regret orders forbid release of official records to any department not
connected directly with service.
(Message in code from Lennox to Sen Yen Lui, Commander-in-chief,
Fifth Sector, accompanying micros of above)
What is going on? Who talked and where? Should these files be lost' for
the duration?
(Reply in code: Sen Yen Lui to Lennox)
Sit tight. We will ask questions of our own. If there is trouble shall
contact you at once so you may take proper steps.
Order: 56431-S.S.D.
From: Mahabi Kabali, Space Admiral, Commanding Fifth Sector
To: Sen Yen Lui, Commander-in-chief, Space Scouts, Fifth Sector
Subject: Service Files
You will herewith order release of records of following (listed below) to
be consulted, in accordance with usual procedure, by Kronfeld, Director of
Colonization Project 308.
O-S-S-D 451 Marson, H. Deceased
O-S-S-D 489 Ksanga, V.T. Deceased
(Coded note accompanying the above)
Sorry. Pressure is on, hard. We can not sit on this now. Anyway both
men are safely dead, and have been for years. And there can not be any
possible leak of the real facts; only suspicions.
(Call on private com band from Kronfeld to Bryar Morle, Port of N'Yok)
Get your best private investigator on this. We know now that the
probable port of entry was N'Yok. And there was a child that looked
younger but was about six or seven. Time of entry approximately
fifteen—sixteen years ago. Sure, the trail is cold, and it's getting colder all
the time. But this is our first positive lead; it could well be the last. I
needn't tell you that this is a category one order. Time is running out.
Draw on the Foundation Funds. We can prove our case if we have the
evidence. Those boneheads in uniform are already sweating!
(Comment of Bran Hudd, partner in Hudd and Rusto, Private
Investigators.)
Cold trail? This thing's in space freeze now. What does this joker think
we are—miracle men or time travelers? Rusto: He lays down the credits
like he grows 'em special in his cellar. So we go through the motion
anyway. And a spread of cash can loosen tongues. You have that mock-up
of what they think the dame looked like. Shove off and start earning our
share.
Chapter One
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 "up-town."
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
undercalculated 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 in him 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 roan, 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 feel. 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 nimbler
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's 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. Well 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 flareback.
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 spot-man 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 bad
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's 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, lad. For all I know
the boss pulled this flare-back 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.
The plate came to a stop and Joktar's palm flattened on the wall where
the heat of his flesh, as well as the patterns on his finger tips, unlocked a
door for them. Ahead was a narrow corridor. The tingle of the alarm
snuffed out. Orrin snorted.
"They must be close. Let's hope most of the boys made it in time."
At the end of the corridor a series of toe and finger holds led them to
climb a shaft. Topping that they would be directly under the roof. Of
course the E-copters would be waiting up there, but the refugees would
have fog bombs to handle that situation.
"You got a good lay-up, kid?"
Joktar's sixth sense pricked. Why did Orrin ask that? Every employee of
Kern had his own hiding place for the raids.
"Any reason not to try the regular?"
"Dunno," Orrin sounded uneasy. "Just wondered… if the boss did set
this one off… well…"
Yes, Kern could have betrayed every bolt hole, every hideout. The
trouble was, as Kern's man, he had no choice now. He'd have to follow the
set pattern of escape already learned. All other avenues would be the
property of Norwold's crowd, or Dander's or Rusanki's and so closed to
outsiders.
"Better speed up, they'll be puffing soon," Orrin warned.
Yes, the raider would loose narcotic gas into the building, following
that with the "shake-up" of sonic vibration: an efficient combination to
clean out the building. Joktar pulled up to the section where he crawled on
hands and knees under the shell of the roof. It was dark here, he would
have to locate the fog bombs by touch.
His outstretched hand swept across a row of egg-shaped objects. Joktar
wriggled one free and nursed it in his left hand, his other going to the
blade in his sash.
He hunched close to the end of the passage, his shoulders now under
the trap door. Heaving it up an inch or so he looked out. The glare of raid
lights dazzled his eyes. Bringing the small bomb up to that gap he
triggered its control and rolled it out
A second egg followed the first. Then there was a pain twisting at him
nerve and muscle: a warning of what would be agony in seconds to come.
The sonics were on below.
"Get going!" Orrin shoved him. The fog was curling up from the eggs,
cutting down visibility.
"Now!" Orrin's hand at his back half propelled him through the
trapdoor. Apparently the ex-marine was more sensitive to the vibrator.
Joktar went in the half-crouch of the experienced knife fighter. The fog
formed an envelope about them, a mist into which E-men would not dare
to blast for fear of shooting their own men.
The dealer made for the far side of the roof. He must swing over, out,
and down; a way not to be taken blindly by anyone who had not practiced
that maneuver. Then, a short dash to another concealed door and the rest
of the escape route tailored to Kern's orders.
Joktar leaped into the whirling blank of the cottony mist. He lighted on
solid footing, sped on to the door. There was no sound of Orrin behind,
perhaps the guard had not dared to make that jump into nothingness. For
a moment the dealer hesitated, and then the first law of his jungle
prevailed: in a raid it was each man for himself.
A panel swung under his hand. He plunged through only to be pinned
in a spearhead of brilliant light. Joktar's last coherent thoughts, as he
went down under the full impact of a stun ray, was that he must have been
included on Kern's list of expendables after all.
Joktar did not open his eyes at once. He let the senses of hearing and
smell relay the first information of his new quarters to his brain. He knew
he was not alone; a moan, a grunt, a querulous mumble to his left, assured
him of company in misfortune. The smell of closely packed and
none-too-clean humanity backed up that deduction.
He concentrated on his last clear memory, he had burst through the
proper bolt hole, straight into the arms of a reception committee. So, now
he must be in the E-pens. For a moment wild panic shook Joktar's control.
Then he forced himself to open his eyes slowly, to lie still, when every inch
摘要：

ScannedbyHighroller.ProofedmoreorlessbyHighroller.MadeprettierbyMollyKate's/Cinnamon'sstylesheet.SecretoftheLostRacebyAndreNortonConfidential:X3457-A-R-From:Kronfeld.Director,ColonizationProject308To:Lennox,Commander,SpaceScouts,FifthSector,DetachedRating.Subject:ServiceFiles.Requirereleasetothisdep...

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