The Door Through Space | Page 5

as a solitary

corpse flung on the steps of the HQ building.
There had been a time when I had walked alone from Shainsa to the
Polar Colony. I had known how to melt into this kind of night, shabby
and inconspicuous, a worn shirtcloak hunched round my shoulders,
weaponless except for the razor-sharp skean in the clasp of the cloak;
walking on the balls of my feet like a Dry-towner, not looking or
sounding or smelling like an Earthman.
That rabbit in the Traffic office had stirred up things I'd be wiser to
forget. It had been six years; six years of slow death behind a desk,
since the day when Rakhal Sensar had left me a marked man;
death-warrant written on my scarred face anywhere outside the narrow
confines of the Terran law on Wolf.
Rakhal Sensar--my fists clenched with the old impotent hate. If I could
get my hands on him!
It had been Rakhal who first led me through the byways of the Kharsa,
teaching me the jargon of a dozen tribes, the chirping call of the
Ya-men, the way of the catmen of the rain-forests, the argot of thieves
markets, the walk and step of the Dry-towners from Shainsa and
Daillon and Ardcarran--the parched cities of dusty, salt stone which
spread out in the bottoms of Wolf's vanished oceans. Rakhal was from
Shainsa, human, tall as an Earthman, weathered by salt and sun, and he
had worked for Terran Intelligence since we were boys. We had
traveled all over our world together, and found it good.
And then, for some reason I had never known, it had come to an end.
Even now I was not wholly sure why he had erupted, that day, into
violence and a final explosion. Then he had disappeared, leaving me a
marked man. And a lonely one: Juli had gone with him.
I strode the streets of the slum unseeing, my thoughts running a
familiar channel. Juli, my kid sister, clinging around Rakhal's neck, her
gray eyes hating me. I had never seen her again.
That had been six years ago. One more adventure had shown me that

my usefulness to the Secret Service was over. Rakhal had vanished, but
he had left me a legacy: my name, written on the sure scrolls of death
anywhere outside the safe boundaries of Terran law. A marked man, I
had gone back to slow stagnation behind a desk. I'd stood it as long as I
could.
When it finally got too bad, Magnusson had been sympathetic. He was
the Chief of Terran Intelligence on Wolf, and I was next in line for his
job, but he understood when I quit. He'd arranged the transfer and the
pass, and I was leaving tonight.
I was nearly back to the spaceport by now, across from the street-shrine
at the edge of the square. It was here that the little toy-seller had
vanished. But it was exactly like a thousand, a hundred thousand other
such street-shrines on Wolf, a smudge of incense reeking and stinking
before the squatting image of Nebran, the Toad God whose face and
symbol are everywhere on Wolf. I stared for a moment at the ugly idol,
then slowly moved away.
The lighted curtains of the spaceport cafe attracted my attention and I
went inside. A few spaceport personnel in storm gear were drinking
coffee at the counter, a pair of furred chaks, lounging beneath the
mirrors at the far end, and a trio of Dry-towners, rangy, weathered men
in crimson and blue shirt cloaks, were standing at a wall shelf, eating
Terran food with aloof dignity.
In my business clothes I felt more conspicuous than the chaks. What
place had a civilian here, between the uniforms of the spacemen and the
colorful brilliance of the Dry-towners?
A snub-nosed girl with alabaster hair came to take my order. I asked for
jaco and bunlets, and carried the food to a wall shelf near the
Dry-towners. Their dialect fell soft and familiar on my ears. One of
them, without altering the expression on his face or the easy tone of his
voice, began to make elaborate comments on my entrance, my
appearance, my ancestry and probably personal habits, all defined in
the colorfully obscene dialect of Shainsa.

That had happened before. The Wolfan sense of humor is only
half-human. The finest joke is to criticize and insult a stranger,
preferably an Earthman, to his very face, in an unknown language,
perfectly deadpan. In my civilian clothes I was obviously fair game.
A look or gesture of resentment would have lost face and dignity--what
the Dry-towners call their kihar--permanently. I leaned over and
remarked in their own dialect that I would, at some future and
unspecified time, appreciate the opportunity to return their
compliments.
By