Sedately the station rose into the star-speckled sky.
SIX
“Don’t Love the Third One”
Before very long yet another Erspia worldlet glowed in the darkness, swelling until it almost filled the oval viewscreen. One could easily have imagined it to be a full-sized planet.
It displayed a new physical feature, though not one as bizarre as Erspia-3’s. It possessed a moon.
The satellite was tiny, perhaps seven miles in diameter, and orbited just outside the shallow atmosphere.
A natural body that size would have been irregular in shape, but this was no asteroid. It was spherical.
Which meant that it had to be artificial, like its primary.
An equally artificial sun, occupying a wider orbit, lit both bodies. The projector station swooped towards the three-body formation, briefly fooling Laedo into thinking it was going to land on the moonlet. But then it veered aside and made for the planetoid.
Laedo glanced at Histrina. Since leaving Murder County (as he thought of it) she had calmed down, emboldening him to release her from her bonds. She had spent the first part of the journey describing the various gruesome ways to kill him that had occurred to her while down on the patchwork world, following that with an account of her past misdeeds, related in minute detail, together with thoughts of future sins she would like to commit. It was a dreary, insane litany, told in a maundering tone. Laedo was glad when she fell silent and watched the new world as it came closer.
The projector station deviated from the approach paths it had adopted earlier and circled Erspia-5 twice before entering the atmosphere. Gradually descending and losing velocity, it continued to hurtle above the landscape, allowing the character of the fifth Erspia world to become evident. It was a peaceful-looking planetoid of neat villages, ploughed fields and grazing herds. More than any of the others, it resembled Histrina’s home world of Erspia-1, except that there were none of the swathes of destruction resulting from the conflict between Ormazd and Ahriman.
The similarity possibly struck Histrina too. “People,” she murmured, gazing on the villages as they passed by. “Lots of people. People to do things to.”
“You’re not going outside at all, unless you swear to behave yourself,” Laedo countered firmly. “Even then I’ll be watching you the whole time. One hint of trouble and I’ll lock you up for the duration.”
Histrina sank wearily on to the couch. “Oh, all right.” She seemed not really interested. Maybe Murder County had burned her out. Either that, or being locked in the lead cabinet had brought her down.
Sailing low with all the majesty of a lighter-than-airship, the station seemed to be looking for a landing place. At length it settled on a grassy meadow just outside a medium-sized settlement.
The moon was a pale yellow orb in the sky, devoid of markings. There had to be a reason for its presence, Laedo thought. Was there intermittent war between it and the planetoid, as with the split world of Erspia-3?
Histrina spoke. “Let’s not go outside yet. Let’s fornicate first.”
Laedo smiled faintly and shook his head. He couldn’t be sure Histrina wouldn’t use the occasion to bite through his jugular.
“Not tonight, Josephine.”
“Josephine? Who’s Josephine?”
“She was… well, never mind. I guess I’m no Napoleon, either.”
“Napoleon? Who’s Napoleon?”
Laedo ignored her. The viewscreen showed crop-bearing fields, as well as a pasture for sheep and another for cows. The outskirts of a village crowded the edge of the screen. The houses were picturesque: black timber beams and thatched roofs.
Men who had been working in the fields were looking up at the projector station with visible astonishment, but with a notable lack of alarm. The impression of imperturbability was reinforced when they came plodding calmly towards it.
Laedo wondered how many Erspias there were, each with its own artificially induced human quirk.
Thousands? For that matter, how did they manage to hang together in a relatively small volume of space?
And was he doomed to tour them indefinitely in search of the mythical Klystar? Maybe he should stay inside and start ripping panels out to begin the possibly hopeless task of gaining control over the command system.
But in the end curiosity won out. Besides, there was always the hope of finding someone skilled enough to make a transductor for his cargo ship.
“We’re going outside,” he told Histrina. “Now remember, I meant what I said. I’ve had more than enough of your misbehaviour. If you kill anyone, or seriously injure anyone, I’ll kill you. Myself. Straight away.”
She looked startled, then pouted in her usual fashion. Most likely she didn’t in the least believe him, and in that she was right. He saw her wickedness as an imposed evil, not her own fault. It would be unethical to kill her, unless absolutely essential in order to protect others.
But self-interest was the one thing she would understand and respond to, after all, and it might help to plant some small doubt in her mind.
“Well, let’s go and see what’s weird about those people out there,” he said. “There’s bound to be something.”
Listlessly Histrina followed him to the portal. The stairway snaked down to the grass.
The three who had been approaching stopped to stare up at them with blank faces as they came out and stood on the platform. The clothing of the villagers was typically rustic: clumpy boots, loose trousers of a coarse, thick material, and waist-length smocks.
Laedo met their stares with one of his own.
“Is Klystar here?” he demanded loudly.
The labourers scratched their heads and looked questioningly at one another. Then one answered in a polite voice.
“No one of that name in our village. Could you have come to the wrong place?”
Laedo let it pass. “Do you have anyone skilled in metalwork?”
“That’s Ebrok the smith you’ll be wanting. He makes all our tools and suchlike.”
Laedo grunted his disappointment, remembering Hoggora’s metalworker on Erspia-1. A village smithy on Erspia-5 would work to about the same standard, he imagined.
He descended the steps. Histrina, with a winsome smile, descended behind him. As her foot touched the turf the local men deferentially fell back, ducking their heads.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” they muttered together.
Then they glanced nervously overhead. The man who had answered for them pointed up at the moon.
“You aren’t from there , are you?” he asked in hushed tones.
“No, we’re not from there,” Laedo assured him.
He congratulated himself. These people did fear the satellite, as he had guessed. But the local’s next words contradicted him.
“I thought not. No one ever comes from there. So where do you come from, in that big… contraption you have?”
Laedo steeled himself to deliver incomprehensible information.
“We come from another world, much, much further off than your moon. You know the lights in the sky you see at night? The stars? Those are other worlds.”
More scratching of heads. “Well, now, it’s hard to see how there could be another world. As for the stars, we always thought them the souls of children waiting to be born.”
The speaker shook his head and sighed, wearing the amiably confounded expression of one told something remarkable but of little account. “You’ve come a long way then, by Voluptus, and you’ll be needing refreshment, so we’d be failing if we showed you no hospitality. Come along and meet the folks.”
All three turned and strolled towards the village without a backward glance to see if their invitation was accepted.