The Chalice of Death Read online

  “You drive a hard bargain, Carso. We have our own clues about the whereabouts of Earth. Fifty thousand credits is no small amount for such information.”

  “You’ve heard the price, Kausirn. I don’t really care, you know. I can manage. But you’ll feel awful foolish when Navarre pulls what he’s going to pull.”

  “Explain yourself.”

  “Fifty thousand credits, Kausirn.”

  A moment’s silence. Then: “Very well. I’ll meet—your terms. Give me what you have to tell me.”

  Carso’s heavy chuckle was heard, deep-throated, confident. “Cash first, talk later. Wire the money to the usual place. When it reaches me, Lord Adviser, I’ll call back—collect.”

  The Lyrellan’s angry scowl was easy to imagine. “You’ll get your filthy money!”

  Click!

  Helna said, “That’s all we transcribed. The conversation took place at about 100 this morning. It takes approximately two hours to wire money from Jorus to Kariad. That means Carso won’t be calling back for a half hour yet.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Navarre muttered. He clenched his blue-stained fists. “But yet I heard it. Carso—selling us out!”

  “He was only a half-breed,” Helna said. “He didn’t have the pure Terran blood. You heard him: he didn’t care. It was just a chance to get money. All the time he journeyed with us to Earth, he was doing it simply as a lark, a playful voyage. The man has the morals of a worm!”

  Broodingly Navarre said, “He was banished for killing an innkeeper in a fit of drunken rage. And if we hadn’t stopped him he surely would have killed the old Genobonian librarian. Everything in his character was sullen and drunken and murderous, and we let him fool us! We thought he was a sort of noble savage, didn’t we? And now he’s sold us out to the Lyrellan!”

  “Not yet. We can still stop him.”

  “I know. But obviously he’s the one who betrayed us to Kausirn while I was on my way back to Jorus last month; heaven knows why he didn’t give Kausirn the coordinates for Earth while he was at it. I guess he was holding out for a higher price—that’s the only sensible explanation. Well, now Kausirn’s met his price.”

  Navarre glanced at the clock. “Order a jetcab for me, Helna. I’m going to pay Carso a visit.”

  Carso’s lodgings were close to the center of Kariad City, in a dilapidated old hotel that might have seen its best days during the long-gone time of the Starkings’ League. There was something oppressively ancient about the street; it bore the numbing weight of thousands of years.

  Navarre kept careful check on the passage of time. Helna’s astonishingly efficient spy system was now monitoring the influx of wired cash from Jorus to Kariad. She would arrange that the fifty thousand units en route from Kausirn would be delayed in reaching Carso at least until 1300. The time was 1250 now.

  Navarre left the cab half a block from Carso’s lodging house, and covered the rest of the distance on foot. A tired-looking Brontallian porter slouched behind the desk in the lobby, huddled over a tattered yellow fax-sheet. When Navarre entered, still imposingly clad in his admiral’s uniform, the porter came to immediate attention.

  Navarre laid a blue five-credit note on the desk. “Is there a Domrik Carso registered here?”

  The porter squinted uncertainly, pocketed the five, and nodded obsequiously. “Yes, Admiral.”

  “His room?”

  Another five. “Seven-oh-six, Admiral.”

  Navarre smiled mildly. “Very good. Now give me the pass-key to his room.”

  Bristling, the porter protested, “Why, I can’t do that, Admiral! It’s against the law! It’s—”

  A third time Navarre’s hand entered his pocket. The porter awaited a third five-credit note, but this time a deadly little blaster appeared. The Brontallian, dismayed, cowered back, clasping his webbed, gray-skinned hands tightly in fear.

  “Give me the key,” Navarre said.

  Nodding profusely, the porter handed Navarre a square planchet of copper with the Kariadi numerals 706 stamped on it. Navarre smiled and gave the terrified Brontallian the third five. Turning, he moved silently toward the elevator.

  If anything, the residence floors of the building were seedier and less reputable-looking than the lobby. Evidently, luminopanels had been installed in the corridor ceilings some time in the past century, but they were dull and flickering things now, giving little light. The air-conditioning system was defective. It was a dismal place.

  Navarre waited, poised outside Room 706, blaster cupped innocently in the hollow of his palm. He had, it seemed, arrived at just the proper moment. He could hear Carso’s voice. The half-breed was in the act of trying to put through a collect call to Kausirn.

  Minutes passed; Navarre heard the operator’s voice through the door, but the sound was barely audible. Once a drunk came out of 703, stared inquisitively at Navarre, and reeled toward him with flustered determination and a fierce expression.

  “Eavesdropper, eh? You know what we do—”

  Navarre took three quick steps forward and caught the man by the throat, shutting him up. He tightened his grip; the drunk’s pockmarked face went bright red. Navarre let go of him, tapped him sharply in the stomach, caught him as he toppled, and dragged him back into his room. The entire encounter had taken but a few seconds. Carso was still expostulating hotly with the operator when Navarre returned to his post outside the door.

  More than a minute passed, and then Navarre heard the distinct syllables, “Go ahead, Kariad. We have the hookup.”

  “Carso here.”

  A familiar thin voice responded, “I take it you’ve received the money.”

  “It came,” Carso rumbled. “And I’m delivering my end of the deal. Listen, now: Navarre planted settlements on Earth—now called Velidoon by its inhabitants, by the way—and on Procyon IV, which used to be called Fendobar and is now called Mundahl. These worlds are located in Galaxy RGC18347. The coordinates are—”

  Navarre listened as Carso offered a full and detailed set of instructions that would enable the Joran fleet to reach Earth. He tensed; timing now would be of the utmost importance. The bait had been cast. He had to stop Carso before the half-breed told Kausirn how to avoid the hook.

  Navarre touched his borrowed key to the plate-stud of the door, and it swung back, revealing Carso squatting before the televisor.

  “Now, as to this second bit of information, Kausirn. It’s simply this: Navarre and—”

  Navarre threw the door open with a noisy slam. Carso was taken totally by surprise. He sprang up, muttering. But Navarre raised his blaster and put a quick bolt through the televisor, cutting off an impatient expostulation on the part of Kausirn.

  Hefting the blaster speculatively, Navarre looked at Carso. “You’ve greatly disillusioned me, Domrik. I clung to certain outmoded beliefs that Earthmen had a certain higher loyalty, even half-breeds. Even the insignificant drop of Terran blood in their veins would—”

  “What the devil are you talking about, Navarre? And what’s the idea of busting in here and wrecking the visor. I’ll have to pay—”

  Navarre tightened his grip on the gun. “Don’t try to bluff out of it. I listened to your whole conversation with Kausirn. I also overheard your earlier talk with him this morning. You sold us out, Domrik. For a stinking fifty thousand credits you were willing to hand Earth and Procyon over to Kausirn’s butchers.”

  Carso’s eyes were angrily bloodshot. He had obviously been drinking heavily—to soothe his troubled conscience, perhaps.

  He said, “I wondered how long it would take you to find out about me. Damn you and your pure blood lines, Navarre! You and all your Earthmen!”

  He came barreling heavily forward.

  Navarre swung the blaster to one side and met Carso’s charge with his shoulder. Carso grunted and kept on coming; he was a stocky man, easily fifty or sixty pounds heavier than Navarre.

  Navarre stepped back out of the way and jabbed the blaster sharply into the pi
t of Carso’s stomach.

  “Hold it, Domrik. Stand where you are or I’ll burn you open!”

  Carso ignored him and swung a wild roundhouse aimed at Navarre’s chin; the Earthman jumped back and fired in the same instant. For a moment, Carso stood frozen in the middle of the room, knees sagging slightly. He glared at Navarre as if in reproach, and dropped.

  “I still don’t believe it,” Navarre said quietly. He tossed a blanket over Carso’s body, slipped the blaster back into its holster, and left, locking the door behind him.

  Chapter Eleven

  In the control cabin of the Kariadi grand flagship, Pride of Kariad, lurking just off the spectacularly ringed world that was Sol VI, Admiral Melwod Finst, otherwise the Earthman Hallam Navarre, sat behind a coruscating sweep of bright screens.

  “Any sign of the Joran ships yet?” he asked.

  From Rear Observation Channel came the reply: “Not yet, sir. We’re looking.”

  “Good.”

  He switched over to Master Communications and ordered a direct-channel hookup with his number two ship, Jewel of the Cluster, lying in wait just off the ecliptic orbit of Procyon VII.

  “Jewel to Pride. What goes?”

  “Admiral Finst speaking. Any sign of a Joran offensive yet?”

  “Not a one, sir. We’re keeping the channel open to notify you of any attack.”

  “Right.”

  Navarre paced the length of the cabin and back. The constant inaction, now that they were actually here in the Sol system, was preying on his nerves.

  They were eight days out from Kariad. Navarre had taken his fleet out on the hop in due order, two days after the killing of Carso; even the mighty field generators of the three battle cruisers had required six days to bring the ships’ across the billion-light-year gulf through hyperspace.

  He had stationed one ship off the Procyon system, and his other two remained in the Sol group, waiting for the Joran fleet to appear. The men knew they were to fight Jorus; they were primed for battle, keen for it. The communications network was kept open round the clock. Whenever the ships of Jorus chose to make their appearance, Navarre and his fleet would be ready.

  Helena had remained on Kariad, controlling operations from that end. Her spies had reliably reported that Kausirn had sent a fleet out to Earth. Navarre awaited it.

  On the fifth day, the radar operator reported activity. “They’re emerging from hyperspace at the very edge of the Sol system, Sir. Four billion miles out, intersecting the orbit of Sol IX.”

  “Order battle stations,” Navarre snapped to his Kariadi aides. Flipping the master channel, he sent an order riffling along subspace to the Jewel: “Get here at once—or faster!”

  The Jewel hopped. A passage of a mere eleven light-years was virtually instantaneous; within minutes a compact wedge of three Kariadi ships waited off ringed Sol VI for the oncoming Jorans.

  “We’re looking to capture, not to destroy,” Navarre repeated. “Our defensive screens are to be mounted and in use at all times. No shots are to be fired unless a direct order to do so comes from Control Center.”

  Two of Navarre’s aides exchanged silent glances as he delivered this order. Navarre knew what they were thinking. But they would never dare to question his order, no matter how absurd it appeared; they were men of discipline, and he was their commanding officer.

  The fleet shifted into defensive position.

  Navarre ran a final check on the network of tractor-beams. All reported in working order at maximum intensity.

  “Okay,” he said. “The Jorans are heading inward toward us on standard ion-drive. Formation A, at once.”

  Formation A was a basket arrangement, the three ship swinging high into a synchronized triangular interlock and moving downward on the unsuspecting Joran ships. At that angle, the tractor-beam network would be at its greatest efficiency.

  Navarre himself remained at the master-communication screens. He leaned forward intently, watching the dull black shapes of the three—only three!—Joran ships moving forward through space like a trio of blunt-snouted sharks homing in on their prey.

  “Now!” he cried.

  The bleak night of space was suddenly lit with the flaring tumult of tractor-beams; golden shafts of light lanced across the black of the void, crashing down on the Joran ships; locking them instantly in a frozen grip.

  The Jorans retaliated: their heavy-cycle guns swung into action, splashing forth megawatts of energy. But Navarre had ordered out full defensive screens; the Joran guns were futile.

  Navarre directed that contact be made with the Joran flagship. After some minutes of negotiation the link came through. Joran Admiral Drulk, eyes blazing with rage, appeared on the screen.

  “What does this mean? You Kariadi have no jurisdiction in this sector of space—or are you looking to touch off a war between Jorus and Kariad?” He paused. “Or is there such a war already in progress—one that we don’t know about?”

  “Jorus and Kariad are at peace, Admiral.”

  “Well, then? I demand you release us from traction at once!”

  “Impossible. We need your ships for purposes of our own. We’ll require your immediate surrender.”

  Drulk stared at him. “Who are you?”

  “Admiral Melwod Finst of Kariad.” Grinning, the Earthman added, “You knew me at the court of Joroiran as Hallam Navarre.”

  “The Earthman! But—”

  “No buts, Admiral. Will you surrender—or do we have to tow your ships into the sun?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Hallam Navarre stood at the edge of the city—the busy, humming, growing city they called Phoenix.

  It was hardly a city yet, by Galactic standards. On Jorus, he thought, a settlement of this size would hardly rate the designation of a village. But city it was, and like the phoenix of old it rose from its own ashes.

  The city rested between two upsweeping chains of hills; it lay in a fertile valley that split the heart of the great continent where the Chalice had been. All around him, Navarre saw signs of activity—the rising buildings, the clack of carpenters’ tools, the buzz of the paving machines as they extended the reach of the city’s streets yet a few hundred yards farther.

  Women, big with child; men busy, impatient for the time when Earthmen would cover their own planet again. The six great captured spaceships stood in the sun, nucleus of the Terran navy-to-be. He saw Jorans and blue Kariadi Working alongside the Earthmen—the captive crews of the spaceships, men to whom Navarre had given the choice of remaining on Earth as free men and workers, or of dying on the spot. The people of the old-young world had no time to waste in guarding prisoners.

  It was slow work, Navarre thought, this rebuilding of a planet. It took time.

  And there were so many enemies in the stars.

  He began to walk through the city, heading for the Administration Building at its center. They greeted him as he passed—everyone knew Hallam Navarre, of course. But despite the warmth of their greetings he felt curiously ill-at-ease in their presence.

  They were the true Earthmen, sleepers for thirty thousand years, untouched by the three hundred decades that intervened between the time of the beginning of their sleep and the time of Navarre’s birth. They were full of the old glories of Earth, the cities and nations and the billions of people.

  All gone, now; all swallowed by the forest.

  Navarre recognized the difference between himself and the real Earthmen. He was as alien to them as the dwarfish, stunted beings who had come to inherit the Earth after the downfall of the empire, the little creatures who watched with awe as their awakened ancestors rebuilt their city.

  Navarre was the product of an older culture than that of these sleepers from the crypt, and an alien culture as well. Earth blood was in his veins, but his mind was a mind of Jorus, and he knew he could never truly be a part of the race that was springing up anew on Earth and around Procyon.

  But that did not mean he would not devote his l
ife to their safety.

  He entered his office—bare, hardly furnished—and nudged open the communicator stud. The robot operator asked for his number, and Navarre said, “I want to talk to Mikel Antrok.”

  A moment later he heard Antrok’s deep voice say, “You want me, Hallam?”

  “Yes. Would you stop off at my office?”

  Antrok arrived ten minutes later. He was a tall, wide-shouldered Terran with unruly blond hair and warm blue eyes; he had served as leader of the Terran settlement during Navarre’s absence on Jorus and Kariad.

  He entered the office and slouched informally against the door. Navarre noticed that Antrok was covered with mud and sweat.

  “Working?”

  “Extending the trunk lines on the central communicator circuit,” Antrok said. “That’s how you reached me so fast. I was tapping into the lines when your call came along. Sweaty work it is, too—but we have to keep pace with the expansion of the city. What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m leaving. For Jorus and Kariad. And I probably won’t be back.”

  Antrok blinked suddenly and straightened up. “Leaving, Hallam? But we’re in the midst of everything now—and you’ve helped us so much. I thought you were staying here for good.”

  Navarre shook his head. “I can’t, Mikel. Earth’s not safe yet.”

  “But we have six ships—”

  “Suppose Jorus sends sixty?”

  “You don’t expect a further attack, do you? I thought you said—”

  “Whatever I might have said at the Council meetings,” Navarre interrupted, “was strictly for the sake of morale. Look here, Mikel: it’s seven months since the time we captured those three Joran ships. That’s more than enough time for Jorus to start wondering what happened out here. And Kariad may wonder whatever became of their phony Admiral Finst and his three ships.”

  “But we’re building more ships, Hallam.”

  “It takes two years to build a starship, and you know it. We have three in progress. That’s still not enough. If Kausirn succeeds in working up enough imperial wrath against us, we’ll have the whole Joran fleet down on our necks. So I’m going back to Jorus. Maybe I can handle the situation at close range.”