Star City

  CHAPTER ONE

  "WE'LL slit this Hook's throat," said Walton Gaines, with all the dark authority in his voice reaching clearly from the galley to where Hook sat at the controls of the space cutter. "And slip him into space a day out from Stellopolis."

  "We can beam in a fresh pilot from there," said Locum Hauser, his voice incisive against the metalloy hull.

  "Getting rid of Hook will be a pleasure." Happy Derning's voice rolled comfortably, with a chuckle, from where he sat drinking coffee in the galley. The other member of the quartet, Cher-charon, had no need to speak to make his feelings known.

  Hook detested inefficiency in others and hated it wholeheartedly in himself. Mistakes spawned from inefficiency. Hook had made many mistakes in his time — perhaps the chief of which was being born into the hundred and first century at all, although to blame himself for that smacked of vulgar ostentation — and he knew with a galactic adventurer's vulnerable philosophy that he would make many more. That was, he conceded, if he survived his last mistake which had been to join up with this unlovely foursome. Now they thought the job for which they had sought his aid was over they planned to kill him off.

  In that they merely joined a long line of infinitely more powerful forces which had attempted to kill off Ryder Hook. You had to feel sorry for them, really.

  These four fools planning their petty deviltry had no idea, of course, that Hook was able to overhear them and all their plans quite clearly. They laboured under the misapprehension that he was just another ruffian and criminal of the galaxy, like themselves, living on his wits and ready to turn a dishonest pek no matter who suffered along the way. His mistake had been teaming up with them in the first place. But the proposition had sounded attractive. A simple matter of stealing this space cutter, loading her with fifty kilos of art — micro-recordings of a thousand stellar system's cultural heritages, all stolen from Bandong's central archives — and taking her across a mere twenty parsecs or so to Stellopolis and there disposing of the cargo with profit all round. The theft angle had pleased Hook most, for Bandong had fallen into the hands of the Boosted Men, and he'd extricated himself with some difficulty, so that the removal of the archival material duplicates had come as something of a bonus.

  As far as Ryder Hook was concerned, a Boosted Man spelled bad news wherever he might be encountered.

  And yet — and yet that evil craving for the powers the proximity of a Boosted Man conferred on Ryder Hook obsessed him with hungers he knew with fifty percent of his senses he must fight until death, and the remaining fifty percent he was helpless to resist, for the sheer lure and marvel of becoming even for a short time surrogate Boosted Man drugged him in ways unknown to other mortals. To hell with all the Novamen! He was just Ryder Hook, outcast and wayfarer of the galaxy, without a wrist credit card, member of no economic conglomerate or multi-system organisation, member of no union, owing allegiance to no single planet or system or armed service. He was Ryder Hook. He stood alone in the whirlpool of stars.

  These four star-rats, now, all belonged to an econorg, all boasted a wrist credit card.

  In that, they felt themselves to be far superior to a loner, immeasurably above an outcast of the galaxy who lacked any form of protection from his parent organisation.

  "You going to do it yourself, Walt, or can I —?"

  "I think, Happy, this is more Locum's style."

  "Maybe, but I'd enjoy it!"

  "Let me handle it, Happy," said Locum Hauser, cool, hard, a professional killer. "You'd bust a gut laughing and forget to slit his throat."

  "I've cut throats in my time!"

  "All right," said Walton Gaines, over-riding them. "Locum does it. We get Hook talking, and then —"

  "A nice clean job."

  Hook considered.

  These four could as easily have simply tossed him out through the air lock. But they kept harping on slitting his throat. No doubt they liked the sight of blood. There were people like that in the galaxy.

  Hook pulled back the cuff of his left sleeve. He wore his familiar indifferent-blue tunic and trousers, and his famous old black boots rested four square on the control throne's pedestal, ready to kick instantly at any of the foot-operated control devices, so situated for attention when his hands were fully occupied. The plain indifferent-blue of the tunic, without any red streaks over shoulders and outside arms was necessary. When he had to he wore what he had to; as a rule he liked to wear indiscriminate, off-putting, unidentifiable clothes. That way he could blend with a multitude of backgrounds.

  On his left wrist the nasty little Delling had been mounted, coupled in with his muscle and nervous system, so that a twitch of muscles of the right intensity would bring the dis-gel gun instantly into action. Most people — all normal people — wore the tiny hideaway guns on their right wrists. Their left wrists held the sealed credit cards. Hook had, before now, found some amusement and profit from that left-handed gun.

  So. He could simply walk back to the galley and melt the four men down into pools of jelly. They could never match him for speed, even in his normal and un-Boosted state. He half rose, the decision firm and dominant in his brain.

  The moral philosophy was all old and worked-out and with cobwebs festooning the neat conclusions.

  If a man tried to kill Ryder Hook that man went in peril of his own life. Hook knew he had no more right to life than any other man; but that meant that a killer had no more right to life than did Ryder Hook. So if one was to die, Hook felt it preferable it should not be Ryder Hook. He might be odd or peculiar in that life-long belief; but that was the way he was.

  He paused.

  Mortality. Killing. States of being and states of unconsciousness. Violence. Well, he'd had his share of that. But he paused, and then sat down again. The space cutter sped between the stars on course, predicted to planetfall, aimed and routed and perfectly functioning in every department. Hook both loved and hated space. He liked watching the stars and the lazy drift of the spiral arms and the weird shapes made by clouds of dust so thin they could be seen only in light-year condensations. He felt at times that a galactic roamer had the best of all worlds. At other times he knew he was an outcast, and then he would metaphorically shake his fist at the damned stars and bawl at them to go to hell. Now he faced a problem that should be so easily settled he would think no more of it than buying a good algae-steak dinner.

  Four men had gone into partnership with him. Now they had successfully pulled off the coup these four wished to dispose of him so as to deny him his share of the proceeds. The money metal would mean to Hook only a little extra time to push back the barrier when he must again do something about making a living. He could kill them before they killed him. That was not unknown.

  But Hook liked the elegant solution to a problem.

  Often the most elegant way of dealing with trouble was to shoot first. Hook knew that. But, here and now, there was another way that amused him.

  Deliberately he checked the controls. The space cutter was just that, a tiny craft with a minimum of luxury and with engines that would fling her across space at ftl rates high in the measurements of starship velocities. Without the refinements of a space yacht and yet with all the power necessary for interstellar travel she was a far cry from a simple interplanetary vessel. She was, in short, valuable property.

  Hook knew her control system, knew her engines, knew her foibles. Her onboard computer housed low in her belly gave output terminals on the flank of the control room, and here Hook checked one final time. The cutter — her name was Spokane — remained firmly on course for Stellopolis. Once there she would not need to go into a parking orbit around the city unless there was a delay at the landing facility. She could barrel straight in, check herself out, using whatever identificat
ion Hook, as the pilot, might think fit, and so berth. The four of them, Walton Gaines, Happy Derning, Locum Hauser and Cher-charon, had been glad to have a fully-qualified space pilot, checked out on interstellar vessels of this tonnage, join them, for none could pilot a spaceship. The art and science was confined, as of necessity it must be, to those few who lasted the strenuous course required. They thought Hook was a spaceman who had, for one reason or another, been beached. Without him they could never have done what they had done. But now they were near enough Stellopolis to plan murder, they felt confident they could beam up a new pilot on the transmat and replace Ryder Hook.

  Replacing Ryder Hook in this man's galaxy was a task beyond them, and certainly beyond most mortals.

  Those famous old black boots of Ryder Hook's held many intriguing instruments for performing many unpleasant catastrophes upon machinery; but it was scarcely necessary for him to employ that arsenal of mayhem now. A few simple passes over the controls, setting up a pattern of mutual incompatibility, a cross-check to ensure that he had not overdone the amusement and thus precipitated total catastrophe, and he could sit back and look with a sombre joy upon the release button.

  An elegant solution. He could easily have yanked out his Tonota Eighty and blasted a dirty great hole in the guidance systems, fouled up the ship's neural synapses, made a slagged and smoking heap of the controls; this way held that priceless gift of inner amusement that came so high in this hard and merciless galaxy.

  "I'm going to catch some sleep-time now," came Gaines' voice from the galley, mingled with the sounds of men rising and cups being replaced. "First thing tomorrow ship-time. Check?"

  "All IQ, Walton," said Locum Hauser. Hook could quite plainly hear the sibilant satisfaction in that smooth voice. Incisive, hard, smooth and deadly, that was Locum Hauser, and for all that Walton Gaines, who was a Homo sapiens, counted himself as the leader of the quartette, Locum Hauser, the mal, held a real and terrifying power.

  Hook listened with ears more finely tuned than any Homo sapiens had a right to own. They were a part of the heritage of his RCI processing that had given him his extraordinary body. His hand hovered over the release button on the board.

  Might it not be even more amusing to let these four petty-minded little killers spend one more night luxuriating in the cleverness of their scheme? Then Ryder Hook's sound commonsense asserted itself. Hauser might become impatient. That clown Happy Derning, Who was a Noruba from out past Commercesh way, might decide he wanted the fun of slashing Hook's throat first, and to hell with Gaines and Hauser. No, Hook decided, he had to let these men know the state of the game right now.

  He flicked the release button.

  Smoke began to pour out of cracks in the control board, and the maze of green lights shining from the control console abruptly became measle-speckled with reds. Measles, like most diseases, was a mere racial memory, a footnote in the history books. But it fitted that board. Hook chuckled.

  "Hey!" he shouted, backing off from the throne. The ship was perfectly IQ he'd made sure of that. "Hey!"

  They came arunning — or, in the case of Cher-charon — a-wriggling.

  "What the hell's going on here —" bellowed Gaines, his high colour even more scarlet and his eyes enraged as he saw the smoke and smelled the charred insulation fumes.

  "Automatics overloaded," said Hook. He pushed past Gaines and snatched down the zer-dumper. The red cylinder yielded to his first press and began to squirt flame-suppressant. "Don't just stand there! Get with it."

  Happy Derning goggled, his mal face vicious, his fingers twisting and twirling one tubular ear.

  "The automatics, did you say, you stupid —" began Hauser. Then he recollected himself. "How did it happen?"

  Hook did not smile, that was not his style; but he cocked an evil eye at Hauser. "If you knew anything about astrogation or handling a spaceship you'd have no need to ask such a damn fool question. This bucket needs servicing. I told you that back at Bandong. But you wouldn't listen."

  "You said you could fly her to Stellopolis —"

  "So I can. But I'll have to pilot her in all the way now. There's a magnetic anomaly storm brewing up dead on course. Without the autos I'll have to barrel her through on manuals — you're lucky I know how."

  For a moment he wondered if he'd overplayed his hand.

  Well, if he had and they were foolish enough to go ahead with their plan, the Delling snugged against his wrist, and he would back himself to dis-gel the four of them before the first cleared his own wrist gun.

  Gaines said: "When we're within range of Stellopolis — can you match velocities with the city?"

  Almost, then, Ryder Hook became tired of this farce.

  Almost, he blasted these four fools where they stood.

  The elegance of his own plan now seemed to him mere posturing. These four were vermin of the spaceways and therefore would not be missed. But he'd had some vague and holy-joe idea that he ought to spare their lives because killing was an evil thing. So it was. But if they persisted in foolishness .

  Not a patient man when it came to idiots, Ryder Hook had had long experience in schooling himself to suffer fools. He needed all that patience so hardly-learned in those moments as the four criminals slowly forced themselves to accept the fact that if they wanted to reach star city alive only Ryder Hook could take them there.

  How Ed Malcom would have smiled in this quiet warm way to see Hook now. Almost, then, Hook wanted to turn back in his memory and say: "See, Ed, what sweetness and light lets a man in for?" But Ed had the right answers; sometimes Hook felt a sad uneasiness that he was not built of the stern stuff from which martyrs are fabricated.

  The space cutter Spokane sped through the dusty emptiness of space and Hook's four associates composed themselves for sleep. This ship night had been programme-alarmed to last seven hours terrestrial, and sharp on the following ship morning the four rolled out, yawning, knuckling their eyes, reaching for the a.m. pep-tab. Hook had dozed on and off during the night when the lights turned down and his capacity for being awakened if a fly buzzed too close or an unfriendly footfall disturbed the air had not been called into operation.

  "We make Stellopolis today, then," said Happy Derning, making conversation, as always laughing. For a mal he might have made a halfway decent human being, considered Hook with some sour bias, had the man not taken up with criminal associates. Happy usually had a fatuous smile curving his lips, and, like a number of people Hook knew — including himself when circumstances demanded — he could chuckle with the best. A man who could chuckle at life wasn't all bad. At least, there was some hope for him, as there could be precious little for the man who frowned on chuckling as beneath his dignity.

  "Ever been to this star city before?" Walton Gaines was fully in command of the situation again, as he saw it. His high colour positively glowed over the breakfast table.

  No-one had. Hook had travelled a great deal of the galaxy; but no man was going to see every sun and every planet in even the long lifetimes granted to people in the hundred and first century.

  "It's a fabulous place." Gaines waxed lyrical, and Hook had to take a sip of his morning tea to hide his smile. Like any civilised man, Hook drank tea whenever he could. The idea of coffee for breakfast was bad enough; the conception that some people drank coffee as their first drink of the day nauseated him.

  "Plenty of girls there?"

  Gaines glanced across at Locum Hauser.

  "All you can desire, Locum. Pleasure is an art on Stellopolis. Something to do with their religion — or maybe their politics. It don't matter which. When we sell this lot we'll have money metal to back our credit cards."

  "Come the day," said Happy Derning.

  Credit cards were fine — essential unless you were as rough, tough and ruthless a person as, for instance, was Ryder Hook — but they had still to be backed with a credit balance with the bank of your econorg. No balance, no credit; no credit, no protection. No protection; welcome to t
he Ryder Hook fanclub, all dues unpaid.

  "We'd never have made it without you, Hook." Gaines lowered his cup and stared at Hook. "What you plan to do?"

  Hook knew he meant after they had unloaded the fifty kilos of art micro-recordings.

  "Ship out, I think."

  "Stellopolis can offer a man a great deal. Me, I'm going to have myself a good time before I move on."

  "Me, too," said Happy Derning, rolling his ear tube with great and anticipatory wallowings of pleasure.

  Locum Hauser, darkly brooding as usual, said nothing. But the way he sliced his algae-ham steak told Hook all he needed to know of the man's thought processes.

  Cher-charon, of course, remained silent. He wriggled his sinuous length more comfortably around the stainless steel perch-bar he occupied for meals and sucked delicately through one of his facial tubes. He was drinking orange juice, an affectation of the galaxy-weary travellers of his home system of Sanzaire. The Sanzaireans were carnivorous; meat eating snake-like people of immense subtlety and dissimulation they aped the ways of others to show that although they were a race recently introduced to the galactic scene they were fully aware and fully deserving of interstellar status. For a carnivore to drink orange juice was a refinement that left Hook, for one, experiencing a mockery he would not put into words on the offchance the affectation might become a racial trait. Hook let other people mind their own business if it did not interfere with his own.

  Now Cher-charon wiggled a tendril or two and the others accepted this mute signal as an indication he would decide later. When the Sanzairean wished to converse with a member of a race whose communications were carried by sound waves he had to couple in the transceiver strapped somewhere to his sinuous body and let the transducers interpret emotions and states of feeling and motives into coded language sections.

  Gaines stood up with his habitual air of decision. The two mals and Cher-charon looked up at him. Hook, also, looked up.

  "We berth today. You, Hook, had better have the cover story word perfect. We don't want trouble with the port authority. You two be ready to break out the cargo. You, Cher, keep out anybody who tries to sniff around."