Gallacellans. In the five centuries since the Gallacellans met the human race on Leucifer IV there had been exactly one opportunity to make that contact, and this was it. Only Grainger and the bounds of possibility stood between Charlot and Stylaster, and Charlot was not the man to respect the bounds of possibility. So what chance had Grainger?
âCaptain delArco will follow my instructions,â said Charlot coldly, getting angrier by the minute because he knew that every word would get back to Stylaster, now or later.
âCaptain delArco had better think long and hard about that,â I said. âAnd so had you. Because between you and me and anyone else who can hear me, I wonât take this ship back down into the atmosphere of that planet. You can have me thrown in jail till I rot, between you, if you have a mind to. But any other attempt at landing on Mormyr is an attempt at suicide and murder, and I wonât do it.
I had to put my case across in the strongest possible terms. It was no good at all saying âItâs too dangerousâ or âIâm scaredâ or âIt hurts.â Nothing short of impossibility was going to stop Charlot, so impossibility was what he was going to get. Iâd gone in once, because I had no way to refuse. But I wasnât going back. In my humble opinion, no one had the right to ask that of me. And privately, I had every confidence that when it came to the crunch, Nick delArco wasnât going to be Charlotâs puppet.
âYou have to try again,â said Charlot.
âNo,â said Eve, who was still waiting for the blood to stop oozing from my mouth. âHe canât. Heâs right. It would kill him.â
I was really and truly thankful to have that support just then. Johnny had the sense to keep his mouth shut, and Nick delArco had absolutely nothing to sayâyet.
I reached out to take the controls in my hands again, and Eve slipped the hood back down over my eyes. We were just drifting in a loose orbit around Leucifer, heading away from Mormyr.
âShall we go home?â I asked.
âWeâll go back to Iniomi,â said Charlot. âWeâll get you back into shape. Then we can discuss what to do next.â
I began to set us on a course for the fourth world.
Stylaster clicked for a moment or two, like a demented typewriter.
âStylaster says,â Ecdyon translated, âthat your ship was most impressive. He is very confident that we will be successful.â
âBastard,â I muttered, not loudly enough for the interpreter to hear. A moment later, I regretted not saying it louder, so that Ecdyon could have passed it on. But it was too late to repeat it.
I still think..., began the wind.
I know, I said. Shut up.
Then I slipped the Swan into the groove.
CHAPTER TWO
Once we were down on Iniomi I was fit for nothing except crawling into my bunk and waiting for the doctor. I didnât want to do that and I had no intention of doing anything that I didnât want to do right at that moment. So I dumped the ship in the yard like a sack of potatoes and I dragged my tired frame out of her belly, and I went walking in the alien night.
The stars were bright, and they were packed closer than I usually see them in the skies of the worlds where I habitually make my living. Brighter even than the stars of New Alexandria. Leucifer was close to the coreâsome even called her a core star. But weâthe human raceâhadnât touched the real core stars. That was bad space to fly, and the worlds were bad, too. We stayed away, in the regions which were more fitting for our kind of people. Perhaps we would have gone farther into the core, extended the tentacles of interstellar human civilization that way, if it hadnât been for the Gallacellans. They were core people. They lived on the worlds which we thought were bad. They didnât seem to like us much, and the feeling was fairly mutual.
The