Uncharted Stars Read Free

that one.” I pointed a finger, but I could not be sure. To the last raised whisker of crest, the last tuft of soft greenish fur, Eet was twin to the toy he had copied.
    â€œClose your eyes!” His order came so quickly I obeyed without question.
    A little irritated, I immediately opened them again, to confront once more two pookhas. I guessed his intent, that I should again choose between them. But to my closest survey there was no difference between the toy and Eet, who had settled without any visible signs of life into the same posture. I put out my hand at last and lifted the nearest, to discover I had the model. And I felt Eet’s satisfaction and amusement.
    â€œWhy?” I demanded.
    â€œI am unique.” Was there a trace of complacency in that remark? “So I would be recognized, remarked upon. It is necessary that I assume another guise.”
    â€œBut how did you do this?”
    He sat back on his haunches. I had gone down on my knees to see him the closer, once more setting the toy beside him and looking from one to the other for some small difference, though I could see none.
    â€œIt is a matter of mind.” He seemed impatient. “How little you know. Your species is shut into a shell of your own contriving, and I see little signs of your struggling to break out of it.” This did not answer my question very well. I still refused to accept the fact that Eet, in spite of all he had been able to do in the past, could think himself into a pookha.
    He caught my train of thought easily enough. “Think myself into a hallucination of a pookha,” he corrected in that superior manner I found irking.
    â€œHallucination!” Now that I could believe. I had never seen it done with such skill and exactitude, but there were aliens who dealt in such illusions with great effect and I had heard enough factual tales of such to believe that it could be done, and that one receptive to such influences and patterns could be made to see as they willed. Was it because I had so long companied Eet and at times been under his domination that I was so deceived now? Or would the illusion he had spun hold for others also?
    â€œFor whom and as long as I wish,” he snapped in reply to my unasked question. “Tactile illusion as well—feel!” He thrust forth a furred forelimb, which I touched. Under my fingers it was little different from the toy, except that it had life and was not just fur laid over stuffing.
    â€œYes.” I sat back on my heels, convinced. Eet was right, as so often he was—often enough to irritate a less logical being such as I. In his own form Eet was strange enough to be noticed, even in a space port, where there is always a coming and going of aliens and unusual pets. He could furnish a clue to our stay here. I had never underrated the Guild or their spy system.
    But if they had a reading on Eet, then how much more so they must have me imprinted on their search tapes! I had been their quarry long before I met Eet, ever since after my father’s murder, when someone must have guessed that I had taken from his plundered office the zero stone their man had not found. They had set up the trap which had caught Vondar Ustle but not me. And they had laid another trap on the Free Trader, one which Eet had foiled, although I did not know of it until later. On the planet of ruins they had actually held me prisoner until Eet again freed me. So they had had innumerable chances of taping me for their hounds—a fact which was frightening to consider.
    â€œYou will think yourself a cover.” Eet’s calm order cut across my uneasiness.
    â€œI cannot! Remember, I am of a limited species—” I struck back with the baffled anger that realization of my plight aroused in me.
    â€œYou have only the limits you yourself set,” Eet returned unruffled. “Perceive—”
    He waddled on his stumpy pookha legs to the opposite side of the