part0021

Catton casually knocked the glass of poisoned wine to the floor. A moment later Skorg attendants came bustling up to mop the parquet, remove the broken glass, and to assure Catton that they were terribly sorry about the accident.

He and Nuuri finished the meal in silence, Catton never taking his eyes off her. After he signed the check he said quietly, “Okay. Let’s go up to my room. We can talk there.”

They rode up in the gravshaft together. Catton let her into the room first, locked the door, and said, “Give me your purse.” He took it from her and tossed it into the closet, which opened only to the thumbprint of the room’s occupant. “You can have it back when you leave,” he told her. “I’m not taking any chances with whatever artillery you might have in there.”

“How do you know I’m not concealing a blaster in my clothes?”

“I don’t. Suppose you strip and let me search them.”

She glared at him, more in annoyance than in outrage; Morilaru did not feel modesty about displaying their bodies. She peeled her clothes off sullenly. Her body was like that of the two Morilaru women he had been marooned with: lean, practically without fatty deposits anywhere. He examined her clothing, found no concealed weapons, and told her to dress.

“Are you satisfied?” she asked him.

“Satisfied that there’s no way you can kill me right this moment, anyway.” He sat down facing her. On Skorg there was no prohibition about non-residents carrying weapons, and he was armed with a small blaster in case she tried anything violent. “So you’re working for Pouin Beryaal,” he said reflectively. “And he sent you here to kill me, eh?”

Catton said, “I suppose you were the one who told Beryaal that my real motive for coming to the outworlds had nothing to do with hypnojewels, too. You told him I was investigating the plot against Earth. And he saw to it that the spaceliner I was taking blew up. You informed on me, didn’t you? You were in Beryaal’s pay?”

“You’re remarkably wise,” she said acidly. “But I don’t have to listen to you talk. Kill me and be done with it, Catton!”

“Kill you? Not till you’ve told me what I want to know, Nuuri. Perhaps, if you tell me enough, I’ll release you.”

“I’m not telling you anything.”

He steepled his fingers. “One aspect of this tangle puzzles me. You worked for Beryaal. So did Doveril. But you offered to betray him to the crime-detection people, and only the fact that he had run away the night before kept him from being picked up with the others. How come one minion of Beryaal would try to sell another one out? Did the wires get crossed?”

Astonishment registered on Nuuri’s face. After a frozen pause she said, “Doveril was working for Beryaal? ”

“Does this come as news to you?”

“I never knew it. Beryaal must have been furious with me! I offered to betray his underling Doveril to you out of personal motives of revenge.”

“Because Doveril jilted you?”

“We lived together for a while. We were planning to take out a permanent residence permit. Then, suddenly, he told me that it was all off, that there was someone else, that I would have to leave. I resolved to punish him for that. I was acting on my own, not Beryaal’s designs, when I informed on Doveril.”

Catton shook his head slowly. “Doveril was a kingpin, in the hypnojewel business, but he was also doing some very important—and illegal—work for Beryaal. And Beryaal was employing you to spy on me.”

Nuuri’s spiked shoulders slumped. “So it didn’t matter that Doveril escaped capture. As head of the Commission, Beryaal would simply have freed him if he had been caught with the others.”

“I’m afraid so,” Catton said.

“But how do you know so much about Doveril? Where is he? Have you seen him?”

“No. But I’ve seen the girl he jilted you for. Doveril dumped her too.”

“She is here? On Skorg?”

Catton nodded. “The night before I first met you, Doveril eloped with her to Skorg. But he dropped her after a few weeks. She’s still living on Skorg, here in Skorgaar.”

Anger glinted in Nuuri’s eyes. “Who is this woman?”

“Estil Seeman. The daughter of the Terran Ambassador to Morilar. Doveril talked her into running away with him when he saw trouble shaping up for himself. She’s living in a cheap hotel on the other side of town, and playing the gondran in a restaurant so she can pay her rent.”

Nuuri laughed harshly. “Of course! He was her music teacher, and she disappeared the same night he ran away! But I was too stupid to connect them. He’s left her, you say? Where is he? On Skorg, too?”

“No. He’s out of the system, on some filthy business of Beryaal’s.”

“You know where he has gone? Tell me!”

“It doesn’t concern you,” Catton said.

“Anything about Doveril concerns me! Tell me! I’ll go there with you, help you capture him—!”

“Hold on!” Catton said. “I’m going to turn you over to Skorg authorities before I leave.”

“No! Let me go with you!”

“After you tried to murder me downstairs? You think I’m going to give you another chance?”

“I have no interest in killing you,” she said. “Beryaal ordered me to come here and attempt it, and I obeyed him. But Beryaal means nothing to me. I’m interested only in engineering Doveril’s downfall. Let me go to this world with you. We’ll arrange a trap for him. Doveril may still trust me; I’ll lure him to you.”

“You’d sell anyone out. How can I trust you?”

“Trust me on faith. I want revenge on Doveril. Nothing else matters to me.” She smiled craftily. “I’ll make a deal with you, Catton. Take me to wherever Doveril is—and when we find him, I’ll tell you where the hypnojewels come from!”

“Doveril once let it slip. I’ve been saving the information until I could put it to good use. And now I can. Take me to Doveril, let me help capture him—and I’ll give you the name of the world where the hypnojewels are made. Is it a deal?”

Catton was silent a long while. The girl was of shifty loyalties; no doubt about that. But how sincere was she now? She had sold out friends, attempted to murder him, lied and betrayed. By accepting the offer of her help, he might be clutching a viper to his bosom. But, on the other hand, catching the wily Doveril on Vyorn might not be easy. Using Nuuri as bait, it would be much simpler for him. And there was the additional handy factor of her offer to give him the hypnojewel information—unless, of course, she was bluffing there.

He decided to risk it. Her hatred for Doveril seemed unfeigned. She was an uncertain ally, but he would take his chances with her.

“All right,” he said. “I’m going to Vyorn in three days. Can you leave then?”

“We’ll travel together. I’ll include you on my papers as a secretary. There shouldn’t be any trouble.”

Catton had his doubts about joining forces with a woman who had spied on him and attempted to murder him. But at this stage of the conflict he needed any ally he could get, even a risky one. He did not have much more time, now that Pouin Beryaal knew that he lived.

He phoned down to the travel agency and arranged for a second set of reservations, in Nuuri’s name, along with accommodations—separate ones—for her during the stopovers.

That night he visited the restaurant where Estil Seeman played, and told the girl he was leaving soon for Vyorn, to apprehend Doveril, and that if he met with success he would stop off and pick her up on his return trip, to take her back to Morilar. He did not mention his meeting with Nuuri to Estil; it might only fan her jealousy.

During the next three days Catton remained in the hotel. He realized that Beryaal might easily have sent more than one agent to dispose of him. Since he had accomplished all he needed to on Skorg, there was no point needlessly exposing himself now. On the third day he and Nuuri journeyed to the spaceport outside Skorgaar, had their papers validated for emigration, and boarded a small 180-passenger ship of the Skorg Line, bound out non-stop to Tharrimar, fifth world of the Tharrim system.

The ten-day voyage dragged hopelessly. The small ship lacked the awesome splendor of the Silver Spear , and Catton spent his time reading, gaming in the lounge, or sleeping. Nuuri was poor company. Her only topic of conversation was the fierce hatred she bore for Doveril, and Catton soon tired of that.

Tharrimar was a medium-sized world populated by loose-skinned red humanoids governed by a Skorg administrator. The meager city near the spaceport held few attractions, and Catton was bothered by the heavy gravitational pull, nearly twice that of Earth. He was not sad when the two-day stopover ended and the ship for Dirlak blasted off.

This ship was even less imposing than the last—half passenger, half freight. But, blessedly, it was only a five-day journey to Dirlak, a bleak place two billion miles from its sun. The temperature never rose above zero on Dirlak. Frozen winds howled all the time, for the twenty Galactic hours Catton and Nuuri were compelled to wait before their ship to Hennim left. Dirlak was a trading outpost of the Skorg Confederation, thinly populated, rarely visited except by transient travelers.

Three days aboard a slow-moving transport ship got them to Hennim, sister world of Vyorn. Hennim was an oxygen world, not much larger than Earth but cursed by a fiercely capricious climate. Torrential rain was falling as Catton landed at the spaceport; within an hour, a searing blast of solar radiation was baking the mud that the fields had become.

The natives of Hennim were humanoids, squat and sturdy, who peered quizzically at Catton from oval eyes the color of little silver buttons. It developed that most of them had never seen a Terran before. A Skorg interpreter informed Catton that less than a hundred Earthmen had ever visited this system; it was too remote to attract Terran industry, and the tourist trade was put off by the difficulties in getting there from any major world of the galactic lens. Of course, there were no diplomatic relations between Earth and any world of this system. When Catton replied that he was going to Vyorn, exclamations of surprises were audible on all sides. No more than a handful of Terran travelers had ever gone to Vyorn.

The shuttle left Hennim the next day. Catton and Nuuri were in the oxygen-breathers’ section of the vessel, along with several dozen Hennimese and a few Skorgs. Behind a partition, Catton learned, eight Vyorni were traveling, breathing their peculiarly poisonous chlorine atmosphere.

The trip took six hours. Near its conclusion, a Hennimese in crew uniform appeared in the passenger cabin to announce—first in his own language, then in Skorg—that landing would shortly take place. “All oxygen-breathing entities are required to wear breathing-suits for their own protection. Those who are without suits may rent them from the purser.”

Catton and Nuuri rented suits, standard medium-size humanoid type, for small sums payable in Skorg currency. Catton adjusted his to the familiar chemical makeup of Earth’s atmosphere; it was the first time he had breathed it since the assignment began.

Not long after, the planet they sought came into view. It was vaguely circular, swathed in a thick green shroud of chlorine. The shuttle-ship landed with minor difficulties. After the last jolt, the Hennimese purser reappeared to convey the oxygen-breathing passengers through the airlock to the waiting spaceport coach.

Outside, Catton got his first look at Vyorn. Flat, barren land stretched outward to the horizon. The greenish murk hung low overhead. The scenery was utterly alien, totally strange. Within his protective suit, he was comfortable enough—but the temperature outside, he knew, was no more than 250 degrees above Absolute. It was a cold, ugly, forbidding world, alien in every respect.