Star Winds

“Who in hell might you be?”

“My name is Rachad Caban, Captain. Allow me to offer all assistance in your project. I overheard your conversation of a few minutes ago—”

“What on Earth are you talking about?” Zhorga screwed up his face, looking at Rachad suspiciously.

“Why, your voyage to Mars, Captain.”

Zhorga gazed briefly at the red planet which still hung low in the sky. “What are you, a loon? What makes you think I can sail my ship millions of miles through space? I was joking, you fool.”

“Since no one has tried, who’s to say it can’t be done?” Rachad rushed on, the words tumbling out of his mouth. “You will need a good astrologer to chart your course. Let me recommend my mentor, Gebeth the Alchemist. Gebeth can also advise you concerning chemical provisioning, so that we shall have sufficient air for the journey, as well as on other matters. Gebeth is learned in many ancient arts.”

“We?” questioned Zhorga. “What is this we?”

“I will be honored to take part in the venture.”

“A fool indeed, longing after a fool’s fancies.” Zhorga belched, steadied himself, then pushed past Rachad and into the tavern.

“Have you resigned yourself to a life on the ground, then?” Rachad called after him tauntingly, then skipped after him to make a final thrust.

“Remember, there is almost certainly ether silk on Mars, or indeed elsewhere in the solar family,” he urged when they were just inside the door. “Also—Mars is nearing conjunction, which will bring it nearer to Earth than for several years to come.”

“Anyone bringing back a cargo of silk from Mars at this time would make himself rich,” Zhorga nodded in agreement. “It’s unlikely anyone else would repeat the feat until the next conjunction.”

These thoughts had already occurred, casually and glancingly as it were, in Zhorga’s mind. Mars had been the main supplier of ether silk in olden times, for it lay far enough from the sun to make crystallization of the substance feasible. Zhorga reasoned that Mars had probably declined in the same way Earth had, with commerce falling off and interest in the outside universe fading. Nevertheless there would still be some traffic on Mars itself, as there was on Earth, unless civilization had collapsed altogether. So it was likely that silk was still being made there.

Sailing the Wandering Queen to Mars had been a wild, daredevil idea that Zhorga had conceived as being the only way out of his difficulties. It was a do-or-die idea—Zhorga would either succeed and make his fortune, or go out in a blaze of glory. Better than moldering away on the ground, anyway, in his view.

But common scorn for the suggestion had caused it to be stillborn in his mind. Until, that was, he came back into the taproom, with Rachad still arguing at his elbow, to be greeted with general uproarious amusement.

“Captain Zhorga, the Martian ambassador!”

“Look out for space monsters, Captain!”

“He’s the original monster himself!”

Zhorga glowered and went purple. His crew alone seemed unaffected by the hilarity and some of them, knowing their captain’s ways, looked genuinely worried. Clabert, the wiry first mate, went so far as to approach him as he stepped to the bar.

“What’s this about Mars, Captain? There’s no truth in it, is there? If so you can count me out. That goes for the others too, I reckon.”

Zhorga clamped a huge iron-like fist on the smaller man’s shoulder and leaned close to him, intimidating him with his bulk.

“Don’t think of running out on me, Clabert,” he said in a low, confidential tone. “If I decide to take you to Mars that’s where we’re all going, see? We’ll sail into the sun if I say so.”

He shoved the man away from him and took himself through the main door. Hunch-shouldered, he went striding away beneath the star-canopied sky, importunately followed by a loping, hopeful Rachad Caban.

****

“All right,” Zhorga said, “let’s get to the business.”

He sat uneasily in Gebeth’s living room, a big rough man who felt incongruous in such cozy, enclosed quarters. His ham-fists rested on the table, at which also sat Rachad and the alchemist.

“First we must settle terms,” said Gebeth mildly. “I will prepare your sailing instructions and give any other assistance I can. There will be no fee. Instead I make two conditions. Rachad here must accompany you, and you must make your Mars landing at the city of Kars, staying there until his business is done.”

This Rachad and Gebeth had already decided, speaking privately in the laboratory while Zhorga waited in the other room. Gebeth had been astonished at the tale told by the two, and made no light matter of the dangers involved in the enterprise. But, seeing Rachad’s keenness, and recognizing that the boy was a born adventurer, he had eventually consented to the deal which he now put before Zhorga.