Trehearne braced his knees and said it was. His heart was in his
throat, the rest of his insides had fallen away somewhere, and the
ship was plunging at a terrible speed to meet the toppling planet. It
touched the atmosphere, and went into it as into a bath of fire. Down
it went, rushing, tearing down with a long triumphant scream, and in
the lower air the clouds rolled and whipped in golden fury where the
dark hull clove them. Trehearne shut his eyes. When he opened them
again the ship was sweeping low over an ocean the color of hammered
brass, and at length he saw ahead a low shore, and beyond it a rolling
plain girdled with tall mountains. On that plain he made out the
gleaming vastness of a city that made New York a village.
"There it is," said Edri. "The hub and center of the galaxy."
Trehearne only shook his head. By this time he had no words. He
watched the boundaries of the city widen, he watched the towers of its
buildings lift and rise until they seemed to bear the sky upon them,
and he was silent. Still dropping, but slowly now in a soundless glide,
the ship bore to the southward. Here for miles the spaceport ran, the
great docks that cradled the giants of the stars. Here was an ordered,
ceaseless, swarming chaos of men and machines, seen from Trehearne's
position now as a sort of yeasty ferment lapping around and over the
apparently endless rows of titanic docks. The sheer size of it was
crushing.
The warning bells rang. Trehearne came partly out of his daze and went
below with the others to await the landing. Seconds ticked by, and
the blood was hammering in his temples, and his muscles twitched with
a nervous excitement. Landing. Landing on a strange world, under a
strange new sun....
Smoothly, softly, the great keel touched down, home again from the
edges of the universe.
Trehearne stood up. The others were already moving, pouring into the
corridor, laughing, talking, eager for the opened lock and home.
Trehearne would have followed them, but Edri's hand was on him, and
Kerrel was in front of him.
"You'll wait," said Kerrel. "Edri, you're responsible for him. See that
he doesn't leave the ship."
He went out, and suddenly, for Trehearne, that keen fine edge of wonder
was all gone. Shairn came up and gave him a reassuring smile. "Don't
worry, Michael. Old Joris is a friend of mine." She went out, too, and
Trehearne said to Edri, "Who is Joris?"
"The Coordinator of the Port. In his younger days he flew for Shairn's
father." Edri sank down into a chair again. "Might as well take it
easy. Kerrel's gone to make his report to Joris in person. This isn't
the sort of thing you want too widely broadcast."
"Why Joris? I thought Kerrel worked for the Council."
"He does. But everything that goes in or out of this port has to clear
through the Coordinator's office. Sit down, Trehearne, you make me
nervous."
"Do you think she'll be able to do anything?"
"I hope so. Damn it, sit down!"
He sat. There were noises in the ship, but they were unfamiliar ones,
the impersonal clangings and boomings of freight hatches, machinery,
the invading boots and unknown voices of dockside men. The sounds of
the port outside came to him muffled and subdued, like the ceaseless
roll of thunder a long way off. There was a feeling of cessation.
The voyage was over. Out there a new sun was shining, there was air
unbreathed by any man of Earth and a whole wide world waiting, a Vardda
world, his as much as theirs, but he was barred from it, he was kept
under hatches like a criminal, unable even to speak while strangers
decided his fate. It scared him, and it angered him, and the more he
felt trapped and helpless the more furious he got. His body would
not stay still. He sprang up and began to stride the floor, and Edri
watched him speculatively.
"Get good and mad," he said. "You can't fight unless you're mad."
"I'll fight."
"You know the line to take. Don't be afraid to let 'em have it."
"I won't."
Time passed. Edri sat and smoked. Trehearne paced, sat down, and paced
again. A year went by, and then another, and then a young man, very
brisk, very efficient, very self-assured, came in and looked at them.
"You're to come to the Coordinator's office," he said, and stared with
frank curiosity at Trehearne. Then he turned to Edri. "He _looks_ all
right. Is this story really true?"
"Never mind," said Edri. "Come on, Trehearne."
He followed them, down the long corridor and into the lock chamber,
leaving the ship as he had first entered it so long ago, so far away.
He stepped out onto the open dock, and the full roaring, thundering
impact of the biggest spaceport in the galaxy hit him like an explosion.
Row upon row, and on all sides, the towering docks stretched to the
end of his seeing and beyond. Ships lay in most of them, recumbent
monsters taking their ease, while men and machines in vast numbers
and great complexity waited on their needs. The ringing air was heavy
with smells, strange spices and subtle unidentifiable things mingling
with the reek of oil and hot metal, cargoes of unimagined riches from
unimaginable worlds. Trehearne stood, feeling the tremendous pulse beat
through him, hardly aware for the moment that Edri was trying to steer
him to a kiosk at the end of the dock, or that the young Vardda was
amused at his wide-eyed astonishment.
In endless hordes, men swarmed upon the looming hulls and went busily
along the docks, testing, checking, guiding and managing the machines.
They were not Vardda men. They were men from the other worlds, who
could not fly the stars. A lot of them--and here Trehearne's eyes
opened even wider, because even though he had been told, seeing is
another thing--were not at all what he would have called human. But in
spite of their strangeness, they seemed familiar. They were like any
of the cheerful, hard-handed, competent men to be seen around any port
of Earth, serving the ships and the planes. The incessant noise was
deafening. Gigantic cranes moved ponderously on their tracks, shifting
cargoes between strings of carriers and the gaping holds. Small trams
weaved in and out of the confusion. At intervals between the docks
were lines of shops, where atomic-powered forges shaped new parts, new
plates and housings. Here a crew worked on a hull with flaring welders,
and there a great bow section was lowered slowly into place with an
ear-shattering clang.
Edri's voice reached him, thin and faint. "Big business, Trehearne. The
biggest in the galaxy. Impressive, isn't it?"
He urged Trehearne along, toward the kiosk that was still some way
ahead. They walked in a railed-off path, and in a moment Trehearne
saw coming toward them on the other side of the rail a large and very
involved piece of machinery that seemed to be walking slowly the length
of the ship's hull, guided by one small human attendant and bearing
in its belly another one who sat surrounded by dials and counters and
little screens.
"That's an X-ray scanner," Edri told him. "They get first crack
at every ship that lands. These ultra-speeds have effects on
metals in time. The scanners test the structure of the metals for
crystallization, or any abnormal molecular shift. The ships become
unsafe after a certain period of service--usually a fairly long
one--and they're watched very closely. It's no fun having a hull fall
apart on you in the middle of nowhere."
He pushed Trehearne on, into the kiosk. The young Vardda was still
amused. Edri said, "There's a lift here. We go down."
Trehearne stepped in, and turned. Just before the door closed smoothly
in his face, he caught a glimpse of a tall white pylon in the distance,
dominating the whole field, and knew without being told that it housed
Port Administration and his immediate destiny. Once more the sense of
wonder was stripped away. The lift dropped and his heart dropped with
it, swiftly down.
The trip was short. The lift set them in a passageway far underground,
and the passageway led to a tube, all very quiet after the roaring of
the port. A small monorail car took them in a handful of minutes to the
levels underneath the pylon, and then there was another lift, a private
one this time, going up. There was a bitter taste in Trehearne's mouth,
and the palms of his hands were sweating.
He thought the lift would never stop, but it did, on the highest level.
The brisk young man motioned them out, and there was an office, bare
and spacious, with window walls that looked on all sides across the
spaceport. Trehearne thought fleetingly that it was less like an office
than the bridge of a starship, pathetically shackled to the soil.
Shairn was there, and Kerrel, standing far apart and very stiff,
their faces set and stubborn. Kerrel did not turn, but Shairn came to
Trehearne and took his hand defiantly. Off at one side a second brisk
young man presided over some sort of a recording device. There seemed
to be a good deal of silence in the place, brought on, perhaps, by the
arrival of the lift, for no one was in a silent mood--least of all the
man who faced them from the other side of a massive table. Trehearne
saw a grizzled, heavy-shouldered giant who was never designed to occupy
an office. The walls cramped him, even such walls as these, because
they were bounded by horizons. His large scarred hands rested uneasily
on the polished wood, impatient of the papers that were stacked there,
and his eyes seemed better used to watching stars than men. Those eyes,
pale blue as winter ice, sought out Trehearne and did not waver until
they had cut from him every bit of knowledge to be had.
"I didn't believe it," Joris said, "but I can see now why you didn't
like the idea of killing him. Too much like one of us. But damn
it!--Kerrel, you of all people should have remembered the law. No
non-Vardda personnel under any circumstances to board any craft
designed for interstellar flight. What got into you?"
Before Kerrel could answer, Shairn spoke for him. "A certain
squeamishness," she said, "and a doubt. I think he regrets them both,
now. You see, Joris, there was a legal doubt. Looking at Trehearne,
could you tell he was non-Vardda?"
"But you knew it...."
"Oh no," said Edri pointedly, "we didn't. We didn't know at all until
he survived the take-off, and then he couldn't very well be classified
as non-Vardda--could he, Joris?"
Joris moved his huge bulk uncomfortably. "A freak," he said. "A
mongrel. You didn't do him any kindness to bring him here. Shairn, I
get a feeling that you had a hand in this. In fact, knowing you...."
Shairn snapped, "What I do is my own business. And as for Michael, he's
as good a Vardda as you are. You haven't answered my question yet. Will
you let him stay in my custody until the Council meets?"
"No! And that's final."
"But Joris...."
"You're a trouble-maker, Shairn. You have been since the day you were
born. But I'm damned if you'll make trouble for me!"
"And I thought you were my friend. Joris, you ought to remember...."
"I took orders from your father when I flew his ships, but you're not
the man he was! And furthermore, I'm not working for you now, I'm
working for the government. Is that clear?"
"Perfectly." She added, in a tone of admiration, "Anyway, you haven't
forgotten how to roar."
Surprisingly, Joris laughed. "No," he said, "no more than you've
learned manners." He glanced from Shairn to the stony-faced Kerrel, who
was still standing like a ramrod and saying nothing--Trehearne gathered
that he had already said everything he considered necessary--and then
back to Edri and the Earthman. "I'll admit this is one hell of a queer
mess, and I'm glad I don't have to decide the final outcome. As I see
it, my duty now is to keep him in custody like any other undesirable,
until the Council takes him off my hands." He looked hard at Shairn.
"That's the law, and that's the way it's going to be."