"Would you like to meet them?" Larrabee seemed to find something very
amusing in that thought. "Just go on up to the castle. They live
there. They're the Lords of Shuruun, and they're always glad to meet
strangers."
He leaned forward suddenly. "Who are you anyway? What's your name, and
why the devil did you come here?"
"My name is Stark. And I came here for the same reason you did."
"Stark," repeated Larrabee slowly, his eyes intent. "That rings a faint
bell. Seems to me I saw a _Wanted_ flash once, some idiot that had led
a native revolt somewhere in the Jovian Colonies--a big cold-eyed brute
they referred to colorfully as the wild man from Mercury."
He nodded, pleased with himself. "Wild man, eh? Well, Shuruun will tame
you down!"
"Perhaps," said Stark. His eyes shifted constantly, watching Larrabee,
watching the doorway and the dark veranda and the people who drank but
did not talk among themselves. "Speaking of strangers, one came here at
the time of the last rains. He was Venusian, from up-coast. A big young
man. I used to know him. Perhaps he could help me."
Larrabee snorted. By now, he had drunk his own wine and Stark's
too. "Nobody can help you. As for your friend, I never saw him. I'm
beginning to think I should never have seen you." Quite suddenly he
caught up his stick and got with some difficulty to his feet. He did
not look at Stark, but said harshly, "You better get out of here." Then
he turned and limped unsteadily to the bar.
Stark rose. He glanced after Larrabee, and again his nostrils twitched
to the smell of fear. Then he went out of the tavern the way he had
come in, through the front door. No one moved to stop him. Outside, the
square was empty. It had begun to rain.
Stark stood for a moment on the steps. He was angry, and filled with a
dangerous unease, the hair-trigger nervousness of a tiger that senses
the beaters creeping toward him up the wind. He would almost have
welcomed the sight of Malthor and the three young men. But there was
nothing to fight but the silence and the rain.
* * * * *
He stepped out into the mud, wet and warm around his ankles. An idea
came to him, and he smiled, beginning now to move with a definite
purpose, along the side of the square.
The sharp downpour strengthened. Rain smoked from Stark's naked
shoulders, beat against thatch and mud with a hissing rattle. The
harbour had disappeared behind boiling clouds of fog, where water
struck the surface of the Red Sea and was turned again instantly by
chemical action into vapour. The quays and the neighboring streets were
being swallowed up in the impenetrable mist. Lightning came with an
eerie bluish flare, and thunder came rolling after it.
Stark turned up the narrow way that led toward the castle.
Its lights were winking out now, one by one, blotted by the creeping
fog. Lightning etched its shadowy bulk against the night, and then was
gone. And through the noise of the thunder that followed, Stark thought
he heard a voice calling.
He stopped, half crouching, his hand on his gun. The cry came again, a
girl's voice, thin as the wail of a sea-bird through the driving rain.
Then he saw her, a small white blur in the street behind him, running,
and even in that dim glimpse of her every line of her body was instinct
with fright.
Stark set his back against a wall and waited. There did not seem to be
anyone with her, though it was hard to tell in the darkness and the
storm.
She came up to him, and stopped, just out of his reach, looking at him
and away again with a painful irresoluteness. A bright flash showed
her to him clearly. She was young, not long out of her childhood, and
pretty in a stupid sort of way. Just now her mouth trembled on the edge
of weeping, and her eyes were very large and scared. Her skirt clung
to her long thighs, and above it her naked body, hardly fleshed into
womanhood, glistened like snow in the wet. Her pale hair hung dripping
over her shoulders.