Sekma appeared to think for a moment. Then he nodded and spoke to Vickers.
"Perhaps it is better this way. It gives him a stake then in the future, something to work for. If he fails, his license will be worth nothing. The Hyades will be all chaos, no good for trade. And if he lives, there will be a bar against him that can never be lifted. So I am willing to accept his terms."
"The mission is the important thing," said Vickers, "not the terms under which it is done. Since you consider Kettrick to be the man for the job — very well, I agree." He glanced at Raymond. "I assume you have no objection?"
Raymond said again, "It's all one to me." Then he looked squarely at Kettrick for the first time since he came in the door. "But it does seem odd that nowhere in this discussion has a single flicker of altruism shone forth — that is to say, that Mr. Kettrick might have taken on this job not to evade punishment or to gain a reward, but simply because it is in the best interests of all humanity that this power should not reside in the hands of any individual or group of individuals."
Kettrick laughed. "The answer to that is that I don't really believe in Sekma's Doomstar, any more than Mr. Vickers does." He was rewarded by a startled look, quickly hidden, in the Security Chief's eyes. "Mr. Vickers is in a position where he must investigate, now that the possibility has been raised, but I think he is quite confident that the eventual report will be negative. I agree, and therefore I feel that he can justly pay for the use of my neck."
He helped himself to another drink and sat down. I'll expect the reinstatement of my license tomorrow, and preferably over FerSeri's dead body. And now that that's settled, suppose we get down to the essentials, like what's the best way to do this and where do I start."
He smiled at them, feeling expansive, triumphant, and full of love even for The Minotaur. Something deep inside him was singing, and the song was a woman's name, and he was drunk with the light of far-off suns.
"Gentlemen?" he said. "I'm waiting."
3
It was night when Johnny Kettrick came back to Tananaru, second world of one of the great mild orange suns of the Hyades.
He had come by devious ways. Vickers and Sekma had insisted, and he had been forced to agree with them, that a sudden reversal of the official position in regard to him would make him instantly suspect to those persons he was supposed to seek out. So his reinstated license lay securely in a bank vault, and Kettrick was, as far as anybody here but Sekma and Dr. Takinu knew, reentering the Cluster illegally.
It had chagrined Kettrick somewhat to find out that Sekma was still one step ahead of him.
"It would not do," he had said, "for you to take all the risk and trouble of going back merely to engage in some more trading activities. No one would believe this either. But fortunately, Johnny, you have an excuse that anyone, even the maker of a Doomstar, would believe."
And Kettrick had looked at him, and Sekma had smiled.
"When I did finally lay you by the heels, you were on your way to the White Sun, with your alien and illegal hands outstretched to grasp the best part of that million credits you have just now reproached me with. One quick, easily portable haul of those beautiful stones and you…But Johnny, didn't you think I knew?"
"No," said Kettrick, "I did not. But I might as well tell you that I've had exactly that idea in mind, to sneak back into the Cluster just long enough to finish that transaction." He shook his head. "Do you have any idea how long it took me to make friends with the Krinn, to get them to trade with me? And then you had to step in."
"Even I," said Sekma, "felt that such skill and courage deserved a better reward. But the Krinn are protected under Cluster law. And how fortunate it turned out that way, because now you have what Mr. Vickers would call the perfect cover."
And they had left it to Kettrick to find his own way back to Tananaru, technically as illegal an alien as ever. Even Sekma's department would not be instructed to let him alone. It was up to him not to get caught.
That was all right with Kettrick. And he thought he might have a surprise or two for Sekma yet.
It had taken him some time to lose his identity. He had done that on the swarming waystation worlds of Aldebaran, where he had altered the tint of his skin and hair and submerged himself in the masses of humanity and near-humanity that mingled around the starports. Using a forged Aldebaranian permit, he had found a job in the crew of a small freighter bound for the Hyades, of which Tananaru was the port of entry.
And so he came home.
Carrying his duffel bag over his shoulder, he shuffled with the rest of the shabby gang of men and man-things through the fourth class gate of the fourth class docking area of the starport, waited while the relays of the electronic scanner clicked over his permit and found no black mark against it or the fingerprints thereon, which were not his own, and passed freely on into the noisy squalid streets beyond.
He walked, not hurrying, breathing the air and feeling the presence of this earthly-unearthly world that had always seemed more home to him than the world of his birth.
He left the vast port area behind, and at length was in the old winding streets of the city that had been here long before the starships and the outland men, long before the age of power and the machine. This was Ree Darva, the changeless, the beautiful. Her people could look both ways, and because they were excited by the future they did not forget to love the past. They were a warm people and liked warm friendly things, and they found the high glittering glass-and-steel geometries of Earthly cities both cold and repellent. They modernized their plumbing and their lighting and all the other things that gave them comfort, but they still preferred to build low sprawling structures of the red-brown stone that kept them cool in the hot summer noons and warm in the mild winter midnights, and they crowned the flat roofs as they had always done, with gardens of flowers and graceful shrubs. Now it was summer, and from the roofs came the sounds of music and laughter and women's voices.
Kettrick smiled, and wandered, but always in the same direction.
Along these narrow ways, more than twenty years ago, he had run with the golden Darva boys and regretted his ugly sunbrowned skin and straight dark hair. Later, among these same roof gardens, he had pursued the golden Darva girls and been pleased that his exotic appearance sometimes gave him an edge over the local swains. His father, Byron Kettrick, had headed the first trade mission to the Hyades from Earth, and stayed there so long that his youngest child thought of Earth only as a place of exile. When the senior Kettrick and the rest of the family returned home, Johnny Kettrick bade them farewell, got a license to trade, and lost himself in that drifting archipelago of suns. Lost himself so well that he forgot about certain laws and regulations governing alien trade, perhaps in part because he did not think of himself as an alien. That, and Sekma's perseverance, had been his downfall.
And now he was home again.
But not safe.
He remembered that with an abrupt start when he saw some men walking ahead of him where two lanes met. This was a residential area, and a slovenly tramp crewman from Aldebaran would be hard put to explain what he was doing in it, so far from the port and so late at night. He stepped into the dark archway of a service gate until the men were out of sight, and then retraced his steps to the last crossing and began to work his way westward, not dreaming any more.
Three of the five small coppery moons were in the sky, weaving shifting light and shadow. He stayed in the shadows. The busy parts of town where the streets were thronged all night with pleasure seekers were off to the southeast, and here there was little traffic of any sort. He saw no more pedestrians. Once he had to jump to the top of the wall and lie there while a ground car went chirring by in the narrow lane, its open body filled with laughing youngsters. But that was all, and presently he came to a house that stood on the bank of a placid little river, where the water gleamed softly in the moonlight.