The Forerunner Factor Read Free

board those ships, which had never been planned for the comfort of their crews, but rather to handle cargo valuable enough to make the long star flights profitable.
    The cargoes they unloaded were varied also. Sometimes, such simply rested in some warehouse to be picked up again by another starship; in fact, that was most often the case. Simsa, from what she had overheard, was very sure that much of it was Thieves’ loot from a score of worlds—to be sold where it could not be traced.
    On the hour Zass had brought her the poisoned meat and she knew that perhaps she would not even last over the few days left of the season unless she made plans which could outscheme Baslter and others of his ilk (who now held her presence among them to be a personal affront), the girl turned out Ferwar’s hidden treasures to examine them closely.
    The old woman had had her own hiding places and most of those she had kept secret from Simsa also. But over the months since her death, with the aid of the zorsal’s keen sight, the girl had managed to uncover a number of them.
    Their burrow was one of those which had originally been a portion of a house, long buried by debris from above. Simsa had often marveled at patches of painting which still clung to the walls in one corner and had wondered what it must have been like to have lived here when Kuxortal was lower and this house might have been even a portion of a High Lord’s palace. The wall itself was of sturdy stones, set in careful pattern, yet not as solid as they looked.
    Now, she pressed at points here and there and then slid out what appeared to be intact stones, but were in truth shells of such, behind which were hollows from which she garnered all the contents, to spread these gleanings out on the floor and survey them critically to judge their market values.
    Some that she knew or guessed might be of great value, though only to special buyers, she had to regretfully push aside, for Ferwar had collected old writings, pieces of stone on which were carvings of broken length, a few pieces of rotting leather scrolls which she had protected as best she could. Simsa could spell out some of those words, having been lectured on their value when Ferwar was in a good mood. Only none of them made sense. Now she bundled all those together and packed them carefully into a sack. Valuable to no one else, such just might be of interest to some starman, but she knew she had little chance of finding such a buyer. However, this was her day to check on her charges. If Gathar was in a good mood, she could perhaps sell these to him at a price which might make her inwardly rage but would be more than she could raise by any effort of her own.
    Placing the bag carefully to one side, she concentrated on the rest of the plunder she had uncovered. There was more hope of bargaining over this on her own.
    These were the best of Ferwar’s treasures and the Old One had never told where she found them, but Simsa remembered seeing them from her earliest days, thus they had been a long time in the old woman’s possession. The girl had often wondered why the Old One had not made some bargain—perhaps directly with Zack who was known to be a runner for the Thieves’ Guild and who was as honest as any such would be (especially if first he were blood sworn as Ferwar could insist, and had in the past).
    There were two pieces of jewelry, a broken chain of thick links of silver—bearing at one end a long, narrow plaque set with pale stones. The other was a thick cufflike armlet certainly forged for the wearing of some man, also silver. It had a ragged break across it which destroyed part of an intricate pattern consisting of heads of outlandish monsters, most of which gaped wide to show fangs, those being insets of a crystalline, glittering stuff.
    Both pieces came, Simsa was sure, from the far past. If she sold them to the wrong hands, they would go for the metal alone to be fed into some melting pot and so be forever