The Star Virus

"You fools, you think you can negotiate with the Streall," he told the merchants. "You're afraid of them; you want to appease them. Yet we could be a match for them if we put our minds to it. For that matter, why do you think they want the lens?"

He paused to let that sink in. "The lens has strange properties, gentlemen."

The Jal-Dee spokesman became visibly uncomfortable. He placed an open file before him on the table. "Well, let's see now, what we know about you. Name: Rodrone Chang. A lot of very disturbing reports of piracy. Oh yes, we know all about that private fleet of yours, armed to the teeth. Chang, we won't be lectured to by a man like you!"

"There was no piracy!" Rodrone expostulated angrily, and untruthfully. "We simply overhauled cargo ships and forced them to sell at a reasonable price. Would you have us starve?"

"Never mind." He waved his hand in annoyance. "This is an order: hand over the lens, and all is well."

"The lens is mine," Rodrone repeated. "It cost me a lot of effort to come by it, and I have uses for it. You have no jurisdiction over me, and that's an end to it."

He realized as he said it that the last statement was unwise. But he would not back out now. He pulled on his gloves, and tossed aside his cloak to reveal his handgun meaningfully.

As he turned to go, the Kormu representative, who up to now had not spoken, turned red. "It was an order, you scum! We know who we're dealing with: a waster, a no-good, a goddamned pirate and a fuzzy-brain!"

This time Rodrone flushed at the ambiguous term, but made no answer. He left the building in a hurry, still defying the blunt command and realizing that he would have to leave Stundaker immediately.

He was honest enough to admit that the contempt had stung, even though it was no different from what he had expected. They had classified him, no doubt, according to their own values, and their estimate could hardly be favorable: a brooding, uncertain man, with a doubtful past and doubtful emotions. Not a man to be trusted, not a man to whose word one attached much importance. It would have been no use trying to persuade them that a basic seriousness underlay his errant nature.

Besides, he thought as little of them as they did of him. In this kind of culture, the only one humanly possible in the Hub, the sediment separated out, but the sediment carried all the weight.

He felt more free on the spaceground. Most spacemen shared varying degrees of disgust for the overfed detritus that had sunk to the bottom of economic activity, taking untold wealth with it. He could expect sympathy and, if there was trouble, help here. He had to get away quickly; there was no knowing how long it would take the House of Jal-Dee—clearly the strongest voice in the current council—to act.

And above, the stars shone down in brilliant daylight, providing the reason for it all: the Hub. The dazzling, star-packed plethora of worlds where anything could happen. Stundaker's primary blazed down on the spaceground, slightly blue in color, and with it a scattering of extra-hard points glittered: nearby suns of the local cluster, many of them only light-weeks away.

He relaxed, enjoying the bustle around him. Hard-eyed men busied themselves with a multitude of tasks. Here, a bargain was struck, there, a fight was in progress. Further off, a woman in billowing skirts sat by a pile of luggage. About sixty percent of the men wore side arms, not because violence was particularly prevalent, but because it added a flamboyance which was in style. There were literally thousands of ships on the ground, of every size, range and mode of propulsion, and seemingly of every age. It required a second look to realize that some of those outlandish lumps of metal actually were ships. Rodrone walked by a stubby, streamlined shape that rested on a quartet of vanes each about three times the vessel's breadth and nearly its height. Bowsers were busy pumping some fluid into it, and he imagined it was taking aboard water as propellant for an old-fashioned nuclear engine. Interplanetary traffic, most likely. Then he caught a whiff of alcohol. By space, a chemical rocket! He smiled, amused but not really surprised.

He skirted around the bowsers and started walking towards his own ship, the Stond, whose battered hull reared up a quarter of a mile away.

Then he stopped. Long, low armored vehicles were parked near the Stond, and even from here he could make out the insignia of the House of Jal-Dee. Men, armed and uniformed, stood guard at the portal ramps. They looked as if they were there to stay.

Casually Rodrone stepped back, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, until he was hidden by the bowsers again. He trembled with a sudden, sick fury. They were after the lens.

But the lens was not aboard the Stond. For safety's sake he had removed it the minute they landed to a hotel in the town that surrounded the spaceground on all sides.