The voyage was ending. They had known from the long period of
deceleration that it was ending, and now the last pressures, and the
small, grinding shocks as the cruiser settled into its dock, told them
that they were again on Llyrdis. The bells rang, and the throb of the
generators gave way to an unfamiliar silence.
They waited, then. And nothing happened. The hours went by and nothing
happened.
Trehearne said finally, "They're not even going to remove us from the
cruiser. They'll take us off to wherever we're bound for without even
hearing us."
Edri shook his head. "No. Vardda law sentences no man without formal
trial."
They could see nothing, hear nothing. Until, at last, the door was
unlocked. There were officers and guards--many guards, all of them
armed. Their faces told nothing.
"You will come with us," said the young captain of guards soberly.
"Where?" demanded Joris. "To Llyrdis prison or--"
"All communication with the prisoners forbidden," clipped the young
captain. "You will come with us."
It seemed strange to Trehearne to walk again on unmoving floors,
corridors, decks--on a planet. The tawny glare of Aldebaran was
dazzling when they filed out of the cruiser. The air seemed
unnaturally damp, heavy with the tang of the sea.
He and Joris and Edri, the first to emerge, looked around with a throb
of eagerness, of half-hope. They could not see much. The cruiser had
landed in a closed-off sector and there were other guards waiting out
here beside a number of the sleek cars.
But Trehearne could hear. He could hear all the usual hum and din and
clangor of the vast spaceport, the grind of cranes and rumble of trams,
the scream of a fast planet-flyer coming in. And then the _whoosh_ of a
great bulk hurtling upward, a starship outbound for distant suns. And
in the distance the shining towers of Llyrdis city still magnificently
challenged the heavens.
Trehearne felt a sick sense of futility. All this vast ordered turmoil
of routine and activity, all the Galaxy-wide trade that centered here,
the thousand-year solidity of Vardda commercial monopoly--how could he
have dreamed that a pitifully faint and aborted radio call could ever
shake it? The faces of his friends showed him how their last hope had
begun to wane.
"The cars," said the young captain. "You four will go in the first one."