The Stoker and the Stars | Page 5

almost through when Mac suddenly grabbed my arm. "Look!"
The stoker was coming down on one of the cargo slings. He stood upright, his booted feet planted wide, one arm curled up over his head and around the hoist cable. He was in his dusty brown Marine uniform, the scarlet collar tabs bright as blood at his throat, his major's insignia glittering at his shoulders, the battle stripes on his sleeves.
The Jeks stopped their lifts. They knew that uniform. They sat up in their saddles and watched him come down. When the sling touched the ground, he jumped off quietly and walked toward the nearest Jek. They all followed him with their eyes.
"We've got to stop him," Mac said, and both of us started toward him. His hands were both in plain sight, one holding his duffelbag, which was swelled out with the bulk of his airsuit. He wasn't carrying a weapon of any kind. He was walking casually, taking his time.
Mac and I had almost reached him when a Jek with insignia on his coveralls suddenly jumped down from his lift and came forward to meet him. It was an odd thing to see--the stoker, and the Jek, who did not stand as tall. MacReidie and I stepped back.
The Jek was coal black, his scales glittering in the cold sunlight, his hatchet-face inscrutable. He stopped when the stoker was a few paces away. The stoker stopped, too. All the Jeks were watching him and paying no attention to anything else. The field might as well have been empty except for those two.
"They'll kill him. They'll kill him right now," MacReidie whispered.
They ought to have. If I'd been a Jek, I would have thought that uniform was a death warrant. But the Jek spoke to him:
"Are you entitled to wear that?"
"I was at this planet in '39. I was closer to your home world the year before that," the stoker said. "I was captain of a destroyer. If I'd had a cruiser's range, I would have reached it." He looked at the Jek. "Where were you?"
"I was here when you were."
"I want to speak to your ship's captain."
"All right. I'll drive you over."
The stoker nodded, and they walked over to his vehicle together. They drove away, toward the Jek ship.
"All right, let's get back to work," another Jek said to MacReidie and myself, and we went back to unloading cargo.
* * * * *
The stoker came back to our ship that night, without his duffelbag. He found me and said:
"I'm signing off the ship. Going with the Jeks."
MacReidie was with me. He said loudly: "What do you mean, you're going with the Jeks?"
"I signed on their ship," the stoker said. "Stoking. They've got a micro-nuclear drive. It's been a while since I worked with one, but I think I'll make out all right, even with the screwball way they've got it set up."
"Huh?"
The stoker shrugged. "Ships are ships, and physics is physics, no matter where you go. I'll make out."
"What kind of a deal did you make with them? What do you think you're up to?"
The stoker shook his head. "No deal. I signed on as a crewman. I'll do a crewman's work for a crewman's wages. I thought I'd wander around a while. It ought to be interesting," he said.
"On a Jek ship."
"Anybody's ship. When I get to their home world, I'll probably ship out with some people from farther on. Why not? It's honest work."
MacReidie had no answer to that.
"But--" I said.
"What?" He looked at me as if he couldn't understand what might be bothering me, but I think perhaps he could.
"Nothing," I said, and that was that, except MacReidie was always a sourer man from that time up to as long as I knew him afterwards. We took off in the morning. The stoker had already left on the Jek ship, and it turned out he'd trained an apprentice boy to take his place.
* * * * *
It was strange how things became different for us, little by little after that. It was never anything you could put your finger on, but the Jeks began taking more goods, and giving us things we needed when we told them we wanted them. After a while, Serenus was going a little deeper into Jek territory, and when she wore out, the two replacements let us trade with the Lud, too. Then it was the Nosurwey, and other people beyond them, and things just got better for us, somehow.
We heard about our stoker, occasionally. He shipped with the Lud, and the Nosurwey, and some people beyond them, getting along, going to all kinds of places. Pay no attention to the precise red lines you see on the star maps; nobody knows exactly what path he wandered from people to people. Nobody