He needed no intuition to tell him to walk wide of the captain. The man
was a rogue, and not a very subtle one.
A flint-hard, angry look came briefly into Malthor's eyes. "You're a
stubborn man. You'll find that Shuruun is no place for stubbornness."
He turned and went away. Stark remained where he was. The ship drifted
on through a slow eternity of time. And all down that long still gulf
of the Red Sea, through the heat and the wreathing fog, the ghostly
chanting haunted him, like the keening of lost souls in some forgotten
hell.
Presently the course of the ship was altered. Malthor came again to the
after-deck, giving a few quiet commands. Stark saw land ahead, a darker
blur on the night, and then the shrouded outlines of a city.
Torches blazed on the quays and in the streets, and the low buildings
caught a ruddy glow from the burning sea itself. A squat and ugly town,
Shuruun, crouching witch-like on the rocky shore, her ragged skirts
dipped in blood.
The ship drifted in toward the quays.
* * * * *
Stark heard a whisper of movement behind him, the hushed and purposeful
padding of naked feet. He turned, with the astonishing swiftness of an
animal that feels itself threatened, his hand dropping to his gun.
A belaying pin, thrown by the steersman, struck the side of his head
with stunning force. Reeling, half blinded, he saw the distorted shapes
of men closing in upon him. Malthor's voice sounded, low and hard. A
second belaying pin whizzed through the air and cracked against Stark's
shoulder.
Hands were laid upon him. Bodies, heavy and strong, bore his down.
Malthor laughed.
Stark's teeth glinted bare and white. Someone's cheek brushed past,
and he sank them into the flesh. He began to growl, a sound that
should never have come from a human throat. It seemed to the startled
Venusians that the man they had attacked had by some wizardry become a
beast, at the first touch of violence.
The man with the torn cheek screamed. There was a voiceless scuffling
on the deck, a terrible intensity of motion, and then the great dark
body rose and shook itself free of the tangle, and was gone, over the
rail, leaving Malthor with nothing but the silken rags of a shirt in
his hands.
The surface of the Red Sea closed without a ripple over Stark. There
was a burst of crimson sparks, a momentary trail of flame going down
like a drowned comet, and then--nothing.