Star Hunter Read Free Page A

eyes
to the man opposite him. Yes, this was no common crewman, nor was he
drunk as he had pretended for the Vorm-man. Now he watched the milling
crowd with a kind of detachment, though Vye was sure he was aware of
every move he himself made.
    Vye finished the liquid. For the first time since he had come into
this place two months earlier he felt like a real person again. And he
had wits enough to guess that the potion he had just swallowed
contained some drug. Only now he did not care at all. Anything which
could wipe out in moments all the shame, fear, and sick despair the
Starfall had planted in him was worth swallowing. Why the other had
drugged him was a mystery, but he was content to wait for
enlightenment.
    Lansor's companion once more applied that compelling pressure to the
younger man's bony forearm. Linked by that hold they left the
Starfall, came into the cooler, far more pleasant atmosphere of the
street. They were a block away before Vye's guide halted, though he
did not release his prisoner.
    "Forty names of Dugor!" he spat.
    Lansor waited, breathing in the air of early morning. The confidence
of the drug still held. At the moment he was certain nothing could be
as bad as the life behind him, he was willing to face what this
strange patron of the Starfall had in mind.
    The other slapped his hand down on an air-car call button, stood
waiting until one of the city flitters landed on beam before them.
    From the seat of the air-car Vye noted they were heading into the
respectability of the upper city, away from the stews ringing the
launch port. He tried to guess their destination or purpose, not that
either mattered much. Then the car descended on a landing stage.
    The stranger waved Lansor through a doorway, down a short corridor
into a room of private quarters. Vye sat down gingerly on the foam
seat extending from the wall as he neared. He stared about. Dimly he
could just remember rooms which had this degree of comfort, but so
dimly now he could not be sure they did not exist only in his vivid
imagination. For Vye's imagination had buoyed him first through the
drab existence in a State Child's Crèche, then through a state-found
job which he had lost because he could not adapt to the mechanical
life of a computer tender, and had been an anchor and an escape when
he had sunk through the depths of the port to the last refuge in the
Starfall.
    Now he pressed both his hands into the soft stuff of the seat and
gaped at a small tri-dee on the wall facing him, a miniature scene of
life on some other planet wherein a creature enveloped in short black
and white striped fur crept belly flat, to stalk long-legged,
short-winged birds making blood-red splotches against yellow reed
banks under a pale violet sky. He feasted on its color, on the sense
of freedom and off-world wonders which it raised in him.
    "Who are you?"
    The stranger's abrupt question brought him back, not only to the room
but to his own precarious position. He moistened his lips, no longer
quite so aglow with confidence.
    "Vye—Vye Lansor." Then he added his other identification, "S. C. C.
425061."
    "State child, eh?" The other had pushed a button for a refresher cup,
then was sipping its contents slowly. He did not ring for a second to
offer Vye. "Parents?"
    Lansor shook his head. "I was brought in after the Five-Hour Fever
epidemic. They didn't try to keep records, there were too many of us."
    The man was watching him levelly over the rim of that cup. There was
something cold in that study, something which curbed Vye's pleasant
feeling of only moments earlier. Now the other set down his drink,
crossed the room. Cupping his hand under Lansor's chin, he brought up
his head in a way which stirred a sullen resentment in the younger
man, yet something told him resistance would only bring trouble.
    "I'd say Terran stock—not more than second generation." He was
talking to himself more than to Vye. He loosed his hold on the boy's
chin, but he still stood there