The Door Through Space | Page 8

office was full of grayish-pink morning and yellow
lights left on from the night before. Magnusson, at his desk, looked as
if he'd slept in his rumpled uniform. He was a big bull of a man, and his
littered desk looked, as always, like the track of a typhoon in the salt
flats.
The clutter was weighted down, here and there, with solidopic cubes of
the five Magnusson youngsters, and as usual, Magnusson was fiddling
with one of the cubes. He said, not looking up, "Sorry to pull this at the
last minute, Race. There was just time to put out a pull order and get
you off the ship, but no time to explain."
I glared at him. "Seems I can't even get off the planet without trouble!
You raised hell all the time I was here, but when I try to leave--what is
this, anyhow? I'm sick of being shoved around!"
Magnusson made a conciliating gesture. "Wait until you hear--" he
began, and broke off, looking at someone who was sitting in the chair
in front of his desk, somebody whose back was turned to me. Then the
person twisted and I stopped cold, blinking and wondering if this were
a hallucination and I'd wake up in the starship's skyhook, far out in
space.
Then the woman cried, "Race, Race! Don't you know me?"
I took one dazed step and another. Then she flew across the space

between us, her thin arms tangling around my neck, and I caught her up,
still disbelieving.
"Juli!"
"Oh, Race, I thought I'd die when Mack told me you were leaving
tonight. It's been the only thing that's kept me alive, knowing--knowing
I'd see you." She sobbed and laughed, her face buried in my shoulder.
I let her cry for a minute, then held my sister at arm's length. For a
moment I had forgotten the six years that lay between us. Now I saw
them, all of them, printed plain on her face. Juli had been a pretty girl.
Six years had fined her face into beauty, but there was tension in the set
of her shoulders, and her gray eyes had looked on horrors.
She looked tiny and thin and unbearably frail under the scanty folds of
her fur robe, a Dry-town woman's robe. Her wrists were manacled, the
jeweled tight bracelets fastened together by the links of a long fine
chain of silvered gilt that clashed a little, thinly, as her hands fell to her
sides.
"What's wrong, Juli? Where's Rakhal?"
She shivered and now I could see that she was in a state of shock.
"Gone. He's gone, that's all I know. And--oh, Race, Race, he took
Rindy with him!"
From the tone of her voice I had thought she was sobbing. Now I
realized that her eyes were dry; she was long past tears. Gently I
unclasped her clenched fingers and put her back in the chair. She sat
like a doll, her hands falling to her sides with a thin clash of chains.
When I picked them up and laid them in her lap she let them lie there
motionless. I stood over her and demanded, "Who's Rindy?" She didn't
move.
"My daughter, Race. Our little girl."

Magnusson broke in, his voice harsh. "Well, Cargill, should I have let
you leave?"
"Don't be a damn fool!"
"I was afraid you'd tell the poor kid she had to live with her own
mistakes," growled Magnusson. "You're capable of it."
For the first time Juli showed a sign of animation. "I was afraid to come
to you, Mack. You never wanted me to marry Rakhal, either."
"Water under the bridge," Magnusson grunted. "And I've got lads of
my own, Miss Cargill--Mrs.--" he stopped in distress, vaguely
remembering that in the Dry-towns an improper form of address can be
a deadly insult.
But she guessed his predicament.
"You used to call me Juli, Mack. It will do now."
"You've changed," he said quietly. "Juli, then. Tell Race what you told
me. All of it."
She turned to me. "I shouldn't have come for myself--"
I knew that. Juli was proud, and she had always had the courage to live
with her own mistakes. When I first saw her, I knew this wouldn't be
anything so simple as the complaint of an abused wife or even an
abandoned or deserted mother. I took a chair, watching her and
listening.
She began. "You made a mistake when you turned Rakhal out of the
Service, Mack. In his way he was the most loyal man you had on
Wolf."
Magnusson had evidently not expected her to take this tack. He
scowled and looked disconcerted, shifting uneasily in his big chair, but
when Juli did not continue, obviously awaiting his answer, he said,
"Juli, he