Sanctuary in The Sky Read Free Page B

distinguished sir,” said Vykor. “The peace of Waystation has to be preserved by every possible means. Oh, I’m not saying that they might not reserve a wrestling-room for a couple of hours. But they wouldn’t be allowed to duel with weapons. If the Glaithes permitted that, the life-expectancy of either Pags or Cathrodynes aboard Waystation would be only a day or two. They hate ea c h other’s guts; they insult each other as readily as breathe, and if they were kept in constant friction and allowed to slaughter each other, the result would be chaos.”
    “So the Glaithes keep order between them, do they? I’d have thought it was a tough job.”
    “Yes, distinguished sir. It is.” Vykor had a powerful respect for Glaithes; so did all the three subject races out along the Arm. “Frankly,” he added after a pause, “I’d give them, if anyone, credit for building Waystation. Since they manage to keep it a neutral world, I wouldn’t put the rest of the job past them either.”
     
     
    III
    Keeping Waystation neutral in this tense situation was a triumph of delicate balance—like trying to land a ship on manual on an airless world. There had to be rules, inflexible rules; likewise, there had to be means of making the rules bend a little when necessary.
    Captain Raige had served with the Waystation staff longer than all but a half-dozen other members of the personnel; she had become a past master ait the essential techniques, including the use of unofficial channels of information. As always, she supervised the disembarkation of the passengers from the newly arrived ship; she scrutinized these, however, more carefully than usual. She couldn’t have said why. It was simply because the atmosphere seemed tense, as though a storm were brewing.
    Waystation was neutral in every sense—medically as well as politically, for example. Disembarkation, therefore, was not complicated by quarantine inspections, and the customs examinations were perfunctory. It was the fault of the Pags or the Cathrodynes—so the Glaithes reasoned—if illegal merchandise got off or on to one of their worlds; what .happened at Waystation was none of their business.
    Within a very short while of the ship’s docking, therefore, the passengers would be free to mingle with the rest of Waystation’s million-odd population—half of it the Glaithe staff, the rest transient. It was Captain Raige’s job to know about all of them.
    Down the null-grav funnel from the ship they came one by one, to emerge blinking into the bright light of the main re- ceptior hall, to stare at the ranked doors of the elevator system, the long chains of chairs on the horizontal conveyers, the steel and plastic and mineraloid interior of the most fantastic artificial construction they had ever seen.
    They had questions: accommodation, transhipment dates, refreshments, local time, necessities and luxuries. The staff of receptionists—lit tl e sloe-eyed Glaithe girls in plain rust colored overalls—equipped them with maps, currency scrip, directions, tickets. Standing aside inconspicuously, Captain Raige watched them with her face composed and her hands folded out of sight in the loose full sleeves of her gown. Only her eyes moved noticeably, but her fingers were also busy, stroking memoranda into the touch-react keys of a tiny recorder covered by her sleeves.
    The Lubarrian woman was the first to pass through reception. Raige had received special instructions about her. She was a factor in a complex profit-and-loss account, kept by the Glaithes at Waystation. Currently the Pags were smarting about some trouble that the Glaithes had put them to—a smack on the hand, so to speak, for attempting to interfere in the administration of Waystation. Accordingly, with scrupulous neutrality, the Glaithes had decided to put the Cathro- dynes to similar inconvenience, making them bring this Mrs. Iquida out to Waystation first class on a Cathrodyne ship— almost unheard of, for a