Redace had abandoned his billowing hat and adopted a cheeky little beret with a prowlike front. “I think not,” he replied, “that pack back there are quite competent to tear each others’ throats out without my help.”
Rodrone smiled. In fact, Redace had no regular companions, only a drifting crowd of murderous ruffians whose high turnover reflected in part his inability to keep his hands off their women.
“Besides,” he continued, “you were right about one thing. There’s something very funny indeed about the lens and I want to know more about it.”
As he spoke he was already walking towards the Stond. A minute later they were airborne, surging upwards towards space. Meanwhile Rodrone was in touch with the space watch.
“Looks like heavy stuff and plenty of it,” a matter-of-fact voice told him. “We could probably make a fight of it. But it would be a fight, no doubt about that, and there’s probably more behind. Contact about half an hour.”
Ludicrously, Rodrone’s main thought was not for the safety of the men and women in his fleet but his need to keep the lens, and keep it undamaged. He put through a general call.
“Hear this,” he said. “You all have your code calls. The regroup code is Cassius. Now scatter.”
At his command a score of ships surged into motion in a score of different directions to lose themselves amid the close-packed stars. The Stond now had a better than even chance of escaping unchallenged, and the same chance of being equally matched if she was challenged. The Streall had made a big mistake in giving him this brief breathing space. That was due, he was sure, to their miscalculation of the human mind. They had never understood that its workings were not forthright, as the workings of their minds were. They had expected that their first communication would produce results.
Redace broke into his musings. “We won’t get much further with examining this gadget ourselves,” he was saying. “We need to go where they really understand atomic physics. I think I know a place. There’s a fellow there who’s an absolute marvel.”
Rodrone nodded. He was watching the rearward detectors. Behind them, the Streall fleet was chasing vainly after an already vanished quarry. Ahead, he hoped, lay knowledge.
V
The planet Kelever was the sixth orbital of a white, intense sun that baked its four innermost worlds beyond any possibility of life. Kelever itself lay in a position that in most solar systems would have been occupied by a gas giant, and indeed long ago it might have been a gas giant. Its atmosphere still possessed an unpleasantly pervasive ammonia-like tang.
Most of the time the surface was gloomy, roofed with cloud and drenched with rain. The Stond put down at a spaceground on the edge of a city five million strong. On the way down Rodrone had noted that the planet was industrially well-developed, busy transport belts conveying endless streams of goods and materials across its broad surface.
While the ship’s computer argued with the ground controller over landing fees, Rodrone stared out over the rain-washed expanse, dotted with the humped shapes of spaceships. One worrying thought that had occurred to him was whether the Streall would be able to track him down here, too. But the possibility was slight. The Merchant Houses maintained no regular information service, and the Stond was just one ship among thousands.
Beyond the spaceground the city bulked gray and enormous, and thoroughly uninviting. It was strange that five million people consented to live in such a place, he thought. “Do you have an address for this man Sinnt?” he asked Redace. “Or do we have to go hunting for a needle in a haystack?”
“Unfortunately… no address,” Redace answered. “But I can guarantee to find our man in a fairly short period of time. Kelever is a scientist’s world, you see. They form clubs, societies. Some of them, I’m afraid are… well, a bit kookie. But there are a few silks among the rags, and Sinnt is one of them. He should be well known; we only have to ask around in the right quarters.”
“Sounds like a rave,” Clave commented sardonically. “Wild Science Rites on the Rain Planet. But supposing this character tells us to go and stuff our lens? It’s a long journey just for a brush-off.”
Redace regarded him quizzically. “My dear fellow, have you no idea what impels we scientific types? Sinnt will be forced to make an investigation of the lens, even if only because if he doesn’t he knows we’ll pass it on to one of the other kooks. He’s much too jealous of his reputation to risk that.”
“One of the other kooks?” Clave echoed in dismay. “I thought you said this guy was the silk among the rags?”
Rodrone ignored the exchange. Clave, of course, was not deeply interested in the lens and was only along for the ride, like all the others except Redace.
At length the shipboard computer finished its haggling with the ground computer and they were free to go into the city. To guard against the unlikely event that Jal-Dee might be trying to trace him through the Stond, Rodrone decided to take the lens with them, where they could lose themselves if need be in the endless drabness of Kelever’s main town.
He, Clave and Redace took a runabout and soon were driving through wet streets thronged with traffic. Many of the streets were roofed, but even those leaked and incessant rivers ran along the gutters.
The favorite color on Kelever seemed to be red; but there was not very much even of that. Dull red neon outlined the low entrances lining the buildings on either side, burning sullenly in the gray atmosphere. Many of the entrances seemed to lead to underground cellars, for the city appeared to be as extensive underground as it was above, possibly obeying an unconscious urge to burrow away from the dismal, ammonia-laden atmosphere.
Kell, as the city was called, was one of the many pockets of relative isolation scattered through the Hub. It had decayed into a certain staidness in its fashions. Tradition would count for more than was normally the case elsewhere, and the flamboyant Redace stood out like the visitor from another planet that he was.
Far from being abashed by his noticeable uniqueness, however, the pirate thrived on it. In a matter of minutes he had found them a hotel where they could leave the lens in a Guaranteed Safe Room.
“And now, dear colleagues,” he said, turning to them with a flourish, “we will proceed to the most enjoyable part of our mission: to search the dens of this place for Mard Sinnt!”
In the next few hours they learned what he had meant when trying to describe the “science clubs” with which Kell abounded. Some of the neon-outlined entrances on the streets gave access to such clubs, though the latter were more in the nature of drinking places with a particular kind of clientele. They plunged into a dim half-world of smoke-filled rooms and bizarre talk. Redace and Clave drank heavily, and seemed to be developing a close comradeship. But Rodrone drank little and said little. To the others, he seemed to be sulking.
Diagrams and microphotographs adorned the walls of many of the places they visited. Much of their content was semi-mystical nonsense or downright crankiness, but there were also what seemed to Rodrone many interesting ideas that he had not encountered elsewhere.
He also found evidence of latter-day sun worship. One reason why atomic science flourished here was that Kelever’s hot dense sun provided an excellent object for study in the field of nuclear physics. To the inhabitants hiding beneath their perpetual umbrellas of cloud, it had come to resemble the fount of all knowledge, showing itself clearly only in brief flashes when the clouds parted or from satellite research stations. The reverence many of the men he met that night held for their sun reminded him of the attitude of the ancient Egyptians towards Ra.