Eye of the Zodiac

"Bad news for the captain." Arishall shrugged. "Well, he can't grumble. In this game you have to take it as it comes. Earl, I need your help."

Dumarest glanced at the field, the mist. It was a good time to leave.

"It won't take long," said the engineer. "A dump-job down in the hold. Some poor devil didn't make it."

He looked very small as he lay in the casket designed for the transportation of beasts, but in which men could ride, doped, frozen and ninety-percent dead. Riding Low, risking the fifteen-percent death rate for the sake of cheap travel. A gamble which he had taken once too often.

"A kid," said Arishall. "I didn't want to take him, but Shwarb insisted."

Dumarest made no comment, looking at the ceiling where someone with a touch of imagination had painted a smiling face. A woman's face with liquid eyes and a softly inviting mouth, hair which was wreathed in a mass of golden curls over a smooth brow. Her throat accentuated the slope of the shoulders, the upper curves of barely portrayed breasts which vanished into a depicted cloud, a mass of vapor which framed the portrait with a milky fleece. The last thing Leon Harvey had seen.

"A kid," said Arishall again. "I guessed he wouldn't make it. He was too thin, too puny. He should have waited, fattened himself up-well, to hell with it. It's all a part of the job."

"Something wrong?" Dinok entered the hold and frowned as he looked at the dead boy. "Hell, I know him."

"From where?" Dumarest was sharp. "Nerth?"

"Nerth? No, Shajok. It was his first trip."

"Are you sure about that?"

Dinok shrugged. "I'd gamble on it, Earl. You know how it is with first-timers. No matter how they try to cover it up, it shows. The kid was green. He didn't know enough to argue about the price when Shwarb cheated him. He was in a sweat, eager to get away. Knowing Shajok, I can't blame him."

"Arishall?"

"I remember Shajok, but not the boy," said the engineer. "Urian handled it. I was busy getting a replacement part for the engine. They had him sealed by the time I got back."

"And when he left?"

"Arishall wouldn't remember that, Earl," said the navigator dryly. "He'd taken a little too much of his medicine. We first dropped the boy on Aestellia and he must have moved on to Tradum. I guess he recognized the Golquin and felt at home. Now he's dead. A pity, but that's the way it goes." He stooped, felt under the casket, rose holding the cheap fabric bag Leon had carried in his hand. "Let's see if he left anything worth having."

His clothes, a cheap ring with a chipped stone, a folding knife with a worn blade, a rasp, a thin book, something wrapped in a cloth, a few coins.

Dinok set them aside as he unwrapped the bundle. It contained a slab of gray material six inches long, four wide, three thick; a block of artificial stone which had been roughly carved into the shape of an idol.

"Rubbish." Dinok wasn't disappointed, those who traveled Low carried little else. "A hobby, I guess. It looks as if he'd worked on it. Want it, Arishall?"

"No, nor this junk either." The engineer tossed aside the book. "It's all yours if you want it, Earl. You take the gear and we'll split the coins. A deal?"

"I can use the bag." Dumarest lifted it, filled it with the idol, the book and other items. "I'll dump the rest."

"Talking about dumping, we'd better get on with the job. You'd better lift him, Earl, while I-"

"I've quit," said Dumarest. "Dinok can give you a hand."

* * * * *

The mist was slow in clearing. While it held, traffic would be scanty. A cafe beyond the gate sold a variety of cheap food and drink. Dumarest bought a mug of coffee and sat nursing it, looking at the few others the establishment contained. It was early yet. Later it would fill with workers, transients, crews assembling and killing a little time, agents on the lookout for cheap labor. All potential sources of information. Now there was time for thought.

Leon was dead and his knowledge had died with him. He must have awoken back at the hotel, finding himself alone, rejected, searching town and field for the man he had believed to be a friend, finding the familiar vessel and booking the only passage he could afford.

A boy who had lied as to the planet of his origin. Shajok, not Nerth, and yet under the primitive truth drug he had stuck to that name.

The name-so tantalizingly similar. And the creed of the Original People, that strange cult which believed in a common world of origin for all the diverse races of mankind. A hidden, secret group who sought no converts but who could, perhaps, hold information of value.

Two scraps of succulent bait for anyone setting a trap-and Dumarest had sensed a trap. But the boy was dead and, by his death, he had proved his innocence.