Star Hunter | Page 6

port. He tried to guess their
destination or purpose, not that either mattered much. Then the car descended on a
landing stage.
The stranger waved Lansor through a doorway, down a short corridor into a room of
private quarters. Vye sat down gingerly on the foam seat extending from the wall as he
neared. He stared about. Dimly he could just remember rooms which had this degree of
comfort, but so dimly now he could not be sure they did not exist only in his vivid
imagination. For Vye's imagination had buoyed him first through the drab existence in a
State Child's Crèche, then through a state-found job which he had lost because he could
not adapt to the mechanical life of a computer tender, and had been an anchor and an
escape when he had sunk through the depths of the port to the last refuge in the Starfall.
Now he pressed both his hands into the soft stuff of the seat and gaped at a small tri-dee
on the wall facing him, a miniature scene of life on some other planet wherein a creature
enveloped in short black and white striped fur crept belly flat, to stalk long-legged,
short-winged birds making blood-red splotches against yellow reed banks under a pale
violet sky. He feasted on its color, on the sense of freedom and off-world wonders which
it raised in him.
"Who are you?"

The stranger's abrupt question brought him back, not only to the room but to his own
precarious position. He moistened his lips, no longer quite so aglow with confidence.
"Vye--Vye Lansor." Then he added his other identification, "S. C. C. 425061."
"State child, eh?" The other had pushed a button for a refresher cup, then was sipping its
contents slowly. He did not ring for a second to offer Vye. "Parents?"
Lansor shook his head. "I was brought in after the Five-Hour Fever epidemic. They didn't
try to keep records, there were too many of us."
The man was watching him levelly over the rim of that cup. There was something cold in
that study, something which curbed Vye's pleasant feeling of only moments earlier. Now
the other set down his drink, crossed the room. Cupping his hand under Lansor's chin, he
brought up his head in a way which stirred a sullen resentment in the younger man, yet
something told him resistance would only bring trouble.
"I'd say Terran stock--not more than second generation." He was talking to himself more
than to Vye. He loosed his hold on the boy's chin, but he still stood there surveying him
from head to foot. Lansor wanted to squirm, but he fought that impulse, and managed to
meet the other's gaze when it reached his face again.
"No--not the usual port-drift. I was right all the way." Now he looked at Vye again as if
the younger man did have a brain, emotions, some call on his interest as a personality.
"Want a job?"
Lansor pressed his hand deeper into the foam seat. "What--what kind?" He was angry and
ashamed at that small betraying break in his voice.
"You have scruples?" The stranger appeared to think that amusing. Vye reddened, but he
was also more than a little surprised that the man in the worn space uniform had read
hesitancy right. Someone out of the Starfall should not be too particular about
employment, and he could not tell why he was.
"Nothing illegal, I assure you." The man crossed to set his refresher cup in the empty slot.
"I am an Out-Hunter."
Lansor blinked. This had all taken on some of the fantastic aura of a dream. The other
was eyeing him impatiently, as if he had expected some reaction.
"You may inspect my credentials if you wish."
"I believe you," Vye found his voice.
"I happen to need a gearman."
But this wasn't happening! Of course, it couldn't happen to him, Vye Lansor, state child,
swamper in the Starfall. Things such as this did not happen, except in a thaline dream,

and he wasn't a smoke eater! It was the kind of dream a man didn't want to wake from,
not if he was port-drift.
"Would you be willing to sign on?"
Vye tried to clutch reality to himself, to remain level-headed. A gearman for an
Out-Hunter! Why five men out of six would pay a large premium for a chance at such
rating. The chill of doubt cut through the first hazy rosiness. A swamper from a port-side
dive simply did not become a gearman for a Guild Hunter.
Again it was as if the stranger read his thoughts. "Look here," he spoke abruptly. "I had a
bad time myself, years ago. You resemble someone to whom I owe a debt. I can't repay
him, but I