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as she sat there wondering about
Frazer's mother.
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Framed
Title:
Telzey Amberdon
Author:
James H. Schmitz, edited by Eric Flint & co-editor Guy
Gordon
ISBN:
0-671-57851-0
Copyright:
© 1926 by James H. Schmitz, edited by Eric Flint
Publisher:
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Baen Books
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- Chapter 27
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THE STAR HYACINTHS
[Editor's note: Although Telzey herself does not appear in this story, the
hero is the same Wellan
Dasinger who figures so prominently in her various adventures.]
The two wrecked spaceships rested almost side by side near the tip of a
narrow, deep arm of a great lake.
The only man on the planet sat on a rocky ledge three miles uphill from the
two ships, gazing broodingly down at them. He was a big fellow in neatly
patched shipboard clothing. His hands were clean, his face carefully shaved.
He had two of the castaway's traditional possessions with him: a massive
hunting bow rested against the rocks, and a minor representative of the class
of life which was this world's equivalent of birds was hopping about near his
feet. This was a thrush-sized creature with a jaunty bearing and bright yellow
eyes. From the front of its round face protruded a short, narrow tube tipped
with small, sharp teeth. Round, horny knobs at the ends of its long toes
protected retractile claws as it bounded back and forth between the bow and
the man, giving a quick flutter of its wings on each bound. Finally it stopped
before the man, stretching its neck to stare up at him, trying to catch his
attention.
He roused from his musing, glanced irritably down at it.
"Not now, Birdie," he said. "Keep quiet!"
The man's gaze returned to the two ships, then passed briefly along a towering
range of volcanoes on the other side of the lake, and lifted to the cloudless
blue sky. His eyes probed on, searching the sunlit, empty vault above him. If
a ship ever came again, it would come from there, the two wrecks by the lake
arm already fixed in its detectors; it would not come gliding along the
surface of the planet.
Birdie produced a sharp, plaintive whistle. The man looked at it.
"Shut up, stupid!" he told it.
He reached into the inner pocket of his coat, took out a small object wrapped
in a piece of leather, and unfolded the leather.
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- Chapter 27
Then it lay in his cupped palm, and blazed with the brilliance of twenty
diamonds, seeming to flash the fires of the spectrum furiously from every
faceted surface, without ever quite subduing the pure violet luminance which
made a star hyacinth impossible to imitate or, once seen, to forget. The most
beautiful of gems, the rarest, the most valuable. The man who was a castaway
stared at it for long seconds, his breath quickening and his hand beginning to
tremble. Finally he folded the chip of incredible mineral back into the
leather, replaced it carefully in his pocket.
When he looked about again, the sunlit air seemed brighter, the coloring of
lake and land more vivid and alive. Once during each of this world's short
days, but no oftener, he permitted himself to look at the star hyacinth. It
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was a ritual adhered to with almost religious strictness, and it had kept him
as sane as he was ever likely to be again, for over six years.
It might, he sometimes thought, keep him sane until a third ship presently
came along to this place. And then . . .
The third ship was coming along at that moment, still some five hours' flight
out from the system. She was a small ship with lean, rakish lines, a hot
little speedster, gliding placidly through subspace just now, her engines
throttled down.
Aboard her, things were less peaceful.
* * *
The girl was putting up a pretty good fight but getting nowhere with it
against the bull-necked Fleetman who had her pinned back against the wall.
Wellan Dasinger paused in momentary indecision at the entrance to the
half-darkened control section of the speedboat. The scuffle in there very
probably was none of his business. The people of the roving
Independent Fleets had their own practices and mores and resented interference
from uninformed planet dwellers. For all Dasinger knew, their blue-eyed lady
pilot enjoyed roughhousing with the burly members of her crew. If the thing
wasn't serious. . . .
He heard the man rap out something in the Willata Fleet tongue, following the
words up with a solid thump of his fist into the girl's side. The thump hadn't
been playful, and her sharp gasp of pain indicated no enjoyment whatever.
Dasinger stepped quickly into the room.
He saw the girl turn startled eyes toward him as he came up behind the man.
The man was Liu Taunus, the bigger of the two crew members . . . too big and
too well muscled by a good deal, in fact, to make a sportsmanlike suggestion [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]