“I am not of the forces now.” Hosteen corrected Kelson perversely. “So it is not Beast Master—today I light and tie for Quade.”
“You’re a holding head rather since an hour ago, aren’t you? You’ve located your stakes. Have you set up a brand?” Kelson asked.
“Arrowhead S,” Storm replied absently. “And what do you wish of a mustered-out Beast Master, Gentle Homo?”
“About a month, maybe more, of your time and services,” Widders rapped out in the clicking Galactic basic of the business worlds. “I want to have you—and your team—guide me into the Blue section—”
Hosteen blinked and looked to Kelson for confirmation that he had really heard that idiotic statement. To his surprise, the expression on the Peace Officer’s face read that this stranger from one of the hothouse worlds meant exactly what he said.
“It is a matter of time, Beast Master. I understand we must get into that country within the next two weeks if we go at all before next season.”
Hosteen did not blink this time. He merely replied with the truth.
“Impossible.”
“Nothing,” returned Widders with his irritating confidence, “is impossible, given the right man and credits enough. Kelson believes you are the man, and I can provide the credits.”
There was no use giving this madman a blanket denial; he would not accept that. Listen to his story, get the reason behind this insane plan, then prove to him its utter folly—that was the only way to proceed.
“Why the Blue?” Hosteen asked as he spooned up some lorg sauce and spread it neatly over a horva fritter.
“Because my son’s there—”
Again Hosteen glanced at Kelson. The Blue was unknown. Those mountains, which were its western ramparts, were known, and appeared on the maps of the Peak country. But what lay behind that barrier existed only as a series of hazy aerial photos. The treacherous air currents of those heights had kept out ’copter surveys, and the territory was the hunting ground of the feared wild Norbie cannibals, hated, shunned, and fought by their own kind of generations. No one—government man, settler, yoris hunter—had ever gone into the Blue and returned. It was posted off limits by government order. Yet here was Kelson listening to a proposal to invade the forbidden section as if Widders was doing no more than suggesting a stroll down a Galwadi street. Again Hosteen waited for enlightenment.
“You’re a veteran of Confed forces, Storm. Well, my son is, too. He served with a Breakaway Task Force—”
Hosteen was a little jarred. To find an inner planet man among the Breakaways—those tough, very tough, first-in-fighters—was unusual.
“He was wounded, badly, just before the Xik collapse. Since then he has been on Allpeace—”
Allpeace, one of the rehabilitation worlds where men were rebuilt from human wreckage to live passably normal lives again. But if young Widders had been on Allpeace, how had he gotten into the Blue on Arzor?
“Eight months ago a transport left Allpeace with a hundred discharged veterans on board, Iton among them. On the fringe of this system, that ship hit a derelict hyper bomb.” Widders might have been discussing the weather if you did not watch his eyes and note that small twitch of lip he could not control.
“Just a month ago a lifeboat from that ship was discovered on Mayho, this planet’s sister world. There were two survivors. They reported that at least one more LB left the transport, and they cruised with her into this system. Their boat was damaged, and they had to set down on Mayho. Their companion headed on here to Arzor, promising to send back help—”
“And didn’t arrive,” Hosteen stated instead of questioned.
But Kelson was shaking his head. “No—there is a chance she did arrive, that she crashed in the Blue. Weak signals of some sort were recorded on robot coms in two different line camps out in the Peaks. A cross check gives us a Blue landing point.”
“And your local climate would mean death to any survivors out there without adequate supplies or transportation at this season,” Widders continued. “I want you to guide me in—to get my son out—”
If he was on that LB and is still alive, Hosteen added silently. But he made his oral reply as plain as he could.
“You are asking the impossible, Gentle Homo. To go into the Blue at this time is simply suicide, and there is no possible way of getting behind the Peaks during the Big Dry.”
“Natives live there all year around, don’t they?” Widders’ voice scaled up a note or two.
“Yes, the Norbies live there. But their knowledge of the country is not shared with us.”
“You can hire native guides, anything you need. There is no limit on funds—”
“Credits can’t buy water knowledge from a Norbie. And there is also this—right now the tribes are making medicine in the Peak country. We would not be able to ride in under those conditions even in the Wet Time when all the odds are in our favor.”
“I’ve heard about that,” Kelson said. “It has to be looked into—”
“Not by me!” Hosteen shook his head. “There’s trouble shaping up back there. I’m down here partly to report it and to try and hire riders to replace our Norbies. Every native has pulled out of the Peak country during the past week—every one—”
Kelson did not appear surprised. “So we heard. And they are moving northeast.”
“Into the Blue.” Hosteen digested that.
“Just so. You were a short way into that country when you discovered that Xik nest. And Logan—he’s hunted along there. You’re the only two settlers who have any ground-level information we can use,” Kelson added.
“No.” Hosteen tried to make that negative sound final. “I’m not completely crazy. Sorry, Gentle Homo, the Blue is closed country—in more ways than one.”
Widders’ eyes were no longer bleak. There was a spark of anger in their gray depths. “If I refuse to accept that?”
Hosteen slipped a credit disk into the table slot. “That is your privilege, Gentle Homo, and none of my business. See you later, Kelson.” He rose and walked away from Widders and his problems. He had his own to deal with now.
CHAPTER THREE
That’s it—” For some reason Storm could not sit still but strode up and down the length of the big main room of the holding while he gave the results of his mission to Galwadi. “I hired just one rider, and I had to bail him out of Confinement—”
“What had he done?” Brad Quade asked.
“Tried to wipe off the pavement of a street, using the aeropilot of the Valodian minister for a mop. The minister was rather upset about it—his protests got Havers twenty days or forty credits. He’d lost his last credit at Star and Comet, so he was sweating out the twenty days. Had served three of them when I paid his fine. He seems to know his business, though.”
“And you saw Kelson?”
“Kelson saw me. He’s blown all his rockets and is spinning in for a big smash if you ask me.” Unconsciously Storm dropped into the old service slang.
There was a soft growl from the shadows, where Surra picked up his mood of irritation and faint apprehension, translating it into her own form of protest.
“What did he say?”
“He had an inner-planet civ in tow. They wanted a guide into the Blue—right now!”
“What?” Quade’s incredulity was as great as Hosteen’s own had been back in Galwadi.
Swiftly he outlined Widders’ story.
“That could all be true, though why he’s so sure his son was on board that LB—wish-thinking, I suppose.” Quade shook his head. “A Norbie might just make it. Only you’re not going to find a Norbie who will try, now now. On the other hand—” Quade’s voice trailed off. He was sitting quietly at his file desk, two of Hing’s kits curled up in his lap, a third cuddled down on his shoulder. Now he looked to the map on the wall. “On the other hand, that might be just the direction in which we should do some prospecting.”