The Star Virus

Clave Theory was about twenty-five years old and in appearance seemed to be made of chalk. His flaxen, almost colorless hair was combed back to spread carelessly over his shoulders. His bony frame was clad in loose-fitting, puce-colored clothing, and his broad face was so pale as to seem consumptive, a deathly impression exacerbated by its expression: the eyes had a staring, glassy quality and the lips were habitually drawn back in a half-grin of sinister amusement.

But the deathly quality was belied by Clave's easy, quick movements and his obvious health and liveliness. He would take an interest in anything and dare anything, the more outlandish the better. Rodrone liked him immensely, partly because despite Clave's own picture of himself as an unwavering cynic he was in fact utterly ingenuous.

"We'll probably have trouble from the bondsmen," Rodrone said, following Clave into the roomy compartment at the end of the corridor.

"Well, I guess you can handle it."

The trouble was not long coming. The chamber was one of several distributed through the Stond, sandwiched between the control room and engine and storage spaces. Egg-shaped and about thirty feet on the long axis, it was well furnished but suffered from the chronic untidiness of men living casually. Rodrone sat down and helped himself from a dish of bread and assorted meats, half-aware of voices and the clumps of heavy boots from below.

A door opened. A dozen men crowded through, some still wearing spacesuits, minus helmets. Others wore, on the breasts of tunics of coarse fabric, the insignia of the Merchant House of Karness.

They were led by a burly black-haired man with a look of sullen anger on his face.

"Don't you know enough to leave your suits downstairs?" Rodrone said mildly. "What kind of house-training did they give you in Karness's barracks?"

The man flushed. "Enough of that, Rodrone. We want a reckoning!"

"We don't have a complaints department," Rodrone said.

"When we joined up with you we expected a better deal," another told him, struggling to get out of his suit. "After three months we've got nothing to show for it"

"Oh no? I observed that you seemed to be enjoying yourselves down on the ground. Like a bunch of damned kids."

"Now look here," the big man put in, his tone softening slightly, "there's plenty of material to be picked up in this cluster. Titanium, gold and beryllium just lying there for the taking. Then there are the organics. It all fetches a decent price, and it only takes a little hard work and application."

"Oh, so it's work you're looking for," Rodrone sighed mockingly.

"It all fetches a decent price!" the other repeated, his voice rising. "But no, we go chasing off to planets not worth a damn. Ferr told you there would be no gems here"—he gestured to one of their number—"and so did your own man, Harver. So why in hell did we come here?"

"I like it here," Rodrone replied in a maddeningly bored, affected tone. "Pleasant spot for a vacation."

They glanced at one another with looks of disgust, then seemed to stiffen as Kulthol entered with one or two of Rodrone's regular men. Kulthol cast a ferrety glance around the room, then walked across it to place himself strategically near one wall, from where he looked on with evident interest.

Rodrone sighed again, this time to himself. He could see what was coming. The malcontents had originally been bondsmen to the merchant house of Karness and had reneged to join Rodrone's outfit at his last call on a Karness-dominated planet. Habitually careless as to whom he took on, he had accepted them without question.

In a way, their dissatisfaction was saddening. Reared as serfs in the service of their masters, their notions of how freebooter gangs like Rodrone's operated were apt to be naive. They had expected to work to a steady schedule, mining metals and other minerals on unpopulated planets and selling them in the metal exchanges, feeding the trade network that extended indefinitely throughout the stars of the Hub. The idea of illegal operations against the merchant houses had probably not entered their minds, and they had certainly not reckoned on being under the orders of a wastrel who was little interested in work, who had set down on this planet by whim and merely used the search for silicon diamonds as an excuse.

In short, they believed in the orderly universe their former masters liked them to believe in. They did not understand the droves of individualists and misfits at large in the colorful, chaotic Hub worlds. Eventually, if Rodrone was right, most of them would crawl back to Karness and take their punishment. A few might stay free.

The spokesman was steeling himself for the final confrontation. "We want to pull out," he said. "We're setting up on our own."

"Go ahead."

"We need a ship."

Rodrone paused, appeared to be considering. "Sure," he said with a shrug. "You can take the old freighter."