She slid down from the rock like a lizard and stood before him. “Wanted to say good-by!” she told him.
Thin and brown, in jacket, breeches, boots, and cap of gray-green rock lichen color, Goth looked very much in her element. The brown eyes looked up at him steadily; the mouth smiled faintly; but there was no real expression on her face at all. There was a quiverful of those enormous arrows slung over her shoulder, and some arrow-shooting device — not a bow — in her left hand.
She followed his glance.
“Bollem hunting up the mountain,” she explained. “The wild ones. They’re better meat.”
The captain reflected a moment. That’s right, he recalled; they kept the tame Bollem herds mostly for milk, butter, and cheese. He’d learned a lot of important things about Karres, all right!
“Well,” he said, “good-by, Goth!”
They shook hands gravely. Goth was the real Witch of Karres, he decided. More so than her sisters, more so even than Toll. But he hadn’t actually learned a single thing about any of them.
Peculiar people!
He walked on, rather glumly.
“Captain!” Goth called after him. He turned.
“Better watch those take-offs,” Goth called, “or you’ll kill yourself yet!”
The captain cussed softly all the way up to the Venture.
And the take-off was terrible! A few swan hawks were watching but, he hoped, no one else.
There was, of course, no possibility of resuming direct trade in the Empire with the cargo they’d loaded for him. But the more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Councilor Onswud would let a genuine fortune slip through his hands because of technical embargoes. Nikkeldepain knew all the tricks of interstellar merchandising, and the councilor was undoubtedly the slickest unskinned miffel in the Republic. It was even possible that some sort of trade might be made to develop eventually between Karres and Nikkeldepain.
Now and then he also thought of Maleen growing marriageable two years hence, Karres time. A handful of witch-notes went tinkling through his head whenever that idle reflection occurred.
The calendric chronometer informed him he’d spent three weeks there. He couldn’t remember how their year compared with the standard one.
He discovered presently that he was growing remarkably restless on this homeward run. The ship seemed unnaturally quiet — that was part of the trouble. The captain’s cabin in particular and the passage leading past it to the Venture’s old crew quarters had become as dismal as a tomb. He made a few attempts to resume his sessions of small talk with Illyla via her picture; but the picture remained aloof.
He couldn’t quite put his finger on what was wrong. Leaving Karres was involved in it, of course; but he wouldn’t have wanted to stay on that world indefinitely, among its hospitable but secretive people. He’d had a very agreeable, restful interlude there; but then it clearly had been time to move on. Karres wasn’t where he belonged.
Nikkeldepain…?
He found himself doing a good deal of brooding about Nikkeldepain, and realized one day, without much surprise, that if it weren’t for Illyla he simply wouldn’t be going back there now. But where he would be going instead, he didn’t know.
It was puzzling. He must have been changing gradually these months, though he hadn’t become too aware of it before. There was a vague, nagging feeling that somewhere was something he should be doing and wanted to be doing. Something of which he seemed to have caught momentary glimpses of late, but without recognizing it for what it was. Returning to Nikkeldepain, at any rate, seemed suddenly like walking back into a narrow, musty cage in which he had spent too much of his life…
Well, he thought, he’d have to walk back into it for a while anyway. Once he’d found a way to discharge his obligations there, he and Illyla could start looking for that mysterious something else together.
The days went on and he learned for the first time that space travel could become nothing much more than a large hollow period of boredom. At long last, Nikkeldepain II swam up in the screens ahead. The captain put the Venture 7333 on orbit, and broadcast the ship’s identification number. Half an hour later Landing Control called him. He repeated the identification number, added the ship’s name, owner’s name, his name, place of origin, and nature of cargo.
The cargo had to be described in detail. It would be attached, of course; but at that point he could pass the ball to Onswud and Onswud’s many connections.
“Assume Landing Orbit 21,203 on your instruments,” Landing Control instructed him curtly. “A customs ship will come out to inspect.”
He went on the assigned orbit and gazed moodily from the vision ports at the flat continents and oceans of Nikkeldepain 11 as they drifted by below. A sense of equally flat depression overcame him suddenly. He shook it off and remembered Illyla.
Three hours later a ship ran up next to him, and he shut off the orbital drive. The communicator began buzzing. He switched it on.
“Vision, please!” said an official-sounding voice. The captain frowned, located the vision stud of the communicator screen and pushed it down. Four faces appeared in the screen, looking at him.
“Illyla!” the captain said.
“At least,” young Councilor Rapport said unpleasantly, “he’s brought back the ship, Father Onswud!”
“Illyla!” said the captain.
Councilor Onswud said nothing. Neither did Illyla. Both continued to stare at him, but the screen wasn’t good enough to let him make out their expressions in detail.
The fourth face, an unfamiliar one above a uniform collar, was the one with the official-sounding voice.
“You are instructed to open the forward lock, Captain Pausert,” it said, “for an official investigation.”
It wasn’t until he was about to release the outer lock to the control room that the captain realized it wasn’t Customs who had sent a boat out to him but the Police of the Republic.
However, he hesitated only a moment. Then the outer lock gaped wide.
He tried to explain. They wouldn’t listen. They had come on board in contamination-proof repulsor suits, all four of them; and they discussed the captain as if he weren’t there. Illyla looked pale and angry and beautiful, and avoided looking at him.
However, he didn’t want to speak to her in front of the others anyway.
They strolled back through the ship to the storage and gave the Karres cargo a casual glance.
“Damaged his lifeboat, too!” Councilor Rapport remarked.
They brushed past him up the narrow passage and went back to the control room. The policeman asked to see the log and commercial records. The captain produced them.
The three men studied them briefly. Illyla gazed stonily out at Nikkeldepain II.
“Not too carefully kept!” the policeman pointed out.
“Surprising he bothered to keep them at all!” said Councilor Rapport.
“But it’s all clear enough!” said Councilor Onswud.
They straightened up then and faced him in a line. Councilor Onswud folded his arms and projected his craggy chin. Councilor Rapport stood at ease, smiling faintly. The policeman became officially rigid.
“Captain Pausert,” the policeman said, “the following charges — substantiated in part by this preliminary examination — are made against you—”
“Charges?” said the captain.
“Silence, please!” rumbled Councilor Onswud.
“First, material theft of a quarter-million value of maels of jewels and jeweled items from a citizen of the Imperial Planet of Porlumma—”