Vezzarn was a couple of decades beyond middle age but a spry and wiry little character, whose small gray eyes didn’t seem to miss much. He was cheery and polite, very good with figures. Above all, he’d logged six passes through the Chaladoor and didn’t mind making a few more — for the customary steep risk pay and with, as he put it, the right ship and the right skipper. The Evening Bird, building in the shipyard, plus Captain Aron of Mulm seemed to meet his requirements there.
The day the captain recalled the odd dream he’d had during their first night in Zergandol, a man named Tobul had dropped by at the office to talk to Vezzarn. They were distant relatives, and Tobul was a traveling salesman whose routes took him over most of Uldune. He’d been a spacer like Vezzarn in his younger days; and like most spacers, the two used Imperial Universum in preference to Uldunese when they talked together. So the captain kept catching scraps of the conversation in Vezzarn’s cubicle.
He paid no attention to it until he heard Tobul inquire, “Safe to mention Worm Weather around here at the moment?”
Wondering what the fellow meant, the captain looked up from his paper work.
“Safe enough,” replied Vezzarn. “Hasn’t been a touch of it for a month now. You been running into any?”
“More’n I like, let me tell you! There was a bad bout of it in…” He gave the name of some Uldune locality which the captain didn’t quite get. “Just before I got there. Very bad! Everywhere you went people were still going off into screaming fits. Didn’t hang around there long, believe me!”
“Don’t blame you.”
“That evening after I left, I saw the sky starting to go yellow again behind me. I made tracks… They could’ve got hit as bad again that night. Or worse! Course you never hear anything about it.”
“No.” There was a pause while the captain listened, straining his ears now. The sky going yellow? Suddenly and vividly he saw every detail of that ominous fiery dream-structure again, drifting towards him, and the yellow discoloration fading against the stars above Zergandol… “Seems like it keeps moving farther west and south,” Vezzarn went on thoughtfully. “Ten years ago nobody figured it ever would get to Uldune.”
“Well, it’s been all around the planet this time!” Tobul assured him. “Longest bout we ever had. And if—”
The captain lost the rest of it. He’d glanced out the window just then and spotted Sunnat coming across the square. It was a one-way window so she couldn’t see him. He hesitated a moment to make sure she was headed for the office. Once before he’d ducked too hastily out the back entrance and run into her as she was coming through the adjoining building arcade. There was no reason to hurt her pride by letting her know he preferred to avoid her.
Today she was clearly on her way to see him. The captain picked up his cap, stopped for an instant at Vezzarn’s cubicle.
“I’ve been gone for a couple of hours,” he announced, “and may not be back for a few more.”
“Right, sir!” said Vezzarn understandingly. “The chances are you’re at the bank this very moment…”
“Probably,” the captain agreed, and left. Once outside, he recalled several matters he might as well be taking care of that afternoon; so it was, in fact, getting close to evening before he returned to the office. Tobul had left and Sunnat wasn’t around; but Goth had showed up, and Vezzarn was entertaining her in the darkening office with horror tales of his experiences in the Chaladoor and elsewhere. He told a good story, apparently didn’t exaggerate too much, and Goth, who no doubt could have topped his accounts by a good bit if she’d felt like it, always enjoyed listening to him.
The captain told him to go on, and sat down. When Vezzarn reached the end of his yarn, he asked, “By the way, just what is that Worm Weather business you and Tobul were talking about today?”
He got a quick look from Goth and Vezzarn both. Vezzarn appeared puzzled.
“Just what? I’m not sure I understand, sir,” he said. “We’ve had a good bit of it around Uldune for the past couple of months, and that’s very unusual for these longitudes, of course. But—”
“I meant,” explained the captain, “what is it?”
Vezzarn now looked startled. He glanced at Goth, back at the captain.
“You’re serious? Why, you’re really a long way from home!” he exclaimed. Then he caught himself. “Uh — no offense, sir! No offense, little lady! Where you’re from is none of my foolish business, and that’s the truth… But you’ve never heard of Worm Weather? The Nuris? Manaret, the Worm World?… Moander Who Speaks with a Thousand Voices?”
“I don’t know a thing about any of them,” the captain admitted. Goth very likely did, now that he thought of it; but she said nothing.
“Hm!” Vezzarn scratched the grizzled bristles on his scalp, and grimaced. “Hm!” he repeated dubiously. He got up behind his desk, went to the window, glanced out at the clear evening sky and sat down on the sill.
“I’m not particularly superstitious,” he remarked. “But if you don’t mind, sir, I’ll stay here where I can keep an eye out while I’m on that subject. You’ll know why when I’m done…”
If Vezzarn had been more able to resist telling a good story to someone who hadn’t heard it before, it is likely the captain would not have learned much about Worm Weather from him. The little spaceman became increasingly nervous as he talked on and the world beyond the window continued to darken; his eyes swung about to search the sky every minute or so. But whatever apprehensions he felt didn’t stop him.
Where was the Worm World, dread Manaret? None knew. Some thought it was concealed near the heart of the Chaladoor, in the Sea of Light. Some believed it lay so far to Galactic East that no exploring ship had ever come on it — or if one had, it had been destroyed too swiftly to send back word of its awesome find. Some argued it might be anywhere — a burning world, or a glittering ice sphere sheathed in mile-thick layers of solidified poisonous gas. Any of those guesses could be true, because almost all that was known of Manaret was of its tunneled, splendidly ornamented interior.
Vezzarn inclined to the theory it was to be found, if one cared to search for it, at some vast distance among the star swarms to Far Galactic East. Year after year, decade after decade, as long as civilized memory went back, the glowing plague of Worm Weather had seemed to come drifting farther westward to harass the worlds of humanity.
And what was Worm Weather? Eh, said Vezzarn, the vehicles, the fireships of the Nuri worms of Manaret! Hadn’t they been seen riding their webs of force in the yellow-burning clouds, tinging the upper air of the planets they touched with their reflections? He himself was one of the few who had encountered Worm Weather in deep space and lived to tell of it. Two months east of Uldune it had been. There in space it was apparent that the clouds formed globes, drifting as swiftly as the swiftest ships.
“In the screens we could see the Nuris, those dreadful worms,” Vezzarn said hoarsely, hunched like a dark gnome on the window sill against the dimming city. “And who knows, perhaps they saw us! But we turned and ran and they didn’t follow. It was a bold band of boys who crewed that ship; but of the twelve of us, three went mad during the next few hours and never recovered. And the rest couldn’t bring ourselves to slow the ship until we had eaten up almost all our power — so we barely came crawling back to port at last!”