: The starmen by Brackett Leigh - Science fiction; Interstellar travel Fiction

@FreeBooksThu 08 Jun, 2023

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g and stumbling in the mud and wet gorse. It was from the crest of one such low rise that he caught a glimmer of light, ahead and to the left.

He said aloud, "There is a cotter's hut," and would not allow himself to hope for anything else. But he spurred the horse on recklessly. Even so, it seemed hours before he reached the light.

He was close onto the place before he could make out its size and shape in the thick darkness. Then he reined in, completely baffled. This was no cotter's hut, nor was it a manor, nor any normal sort of dwelling. He saw a broken shaft of stone that had once been a squat crenellated tower, and around its foot was a ruin of walls and outbuildings. It was very old, Trehearne thought--probably medieval, and probably the onetime stronghold of a robber baron.

A ruin, lost in the wasteland. And yet it was inhabited. Yellow lamplight poured from the embrasures of the keep. There were horses in the courtyard. There was a sound of voices, and in the rickety outbuildings that leaned against the wall there were lanterns and noises and activity. Trehearne sat still for a time, trying to make some sort of sense out of what he saw, and failing. Then he dismounted and let his weary animal join its fellows, going himself toward the outbuildings and the men who were working there. He carried a small automatic in his pocket. He was not afraid, but he was glad he had it. There was an unsettling queerness about the place, about its situation and whatever reason it had for being.

The wooden structures were not nearly so tumbledown as they seemed at first look. In fact, Trehearne had a ridiculous idea that they had been built that way deliberately. They were crammed now with crates and packing cases, not wooden ones, Trehearne noticed, but light, strong plastic, marked with unfamiliar symbols. Others were being fetched up through openings in the stone that led apparently into the cellars beneath the keep. The men who handled them, with a good deal of laughter and loud talk, were mostly young, and all of the Vardda stock, and their dress was as strange as their language. Trehearne could think of no national costume that included quite that kind of a tunic belted over loose trousers, nor that particular type of sandal. A little shiver slid over him and he stopped just beyond the edge of the lantern-light. The men had not seen him yet, and he was suddenly not sure that he wanted them to. The strangeness began to come through to him, no longer in the mass, but in small casual detail that made it real, and now he began to be afraid, not with his body but with his mind.

From out of the rain and the shadows close by him, someone said, "You must be Trehearne."

The sheer reflex of tight-strung nerves closed Trehearne's grip on the automatic and brought him whirling around. The speaker must have seen the gesture, for he said quietly, "You won't need that. Come back a way, I want to talk to you."

"Who--?"

"Keep your voice down! Come on."

Trehearne followed the blurred figure of a man in a yellow tunic and dark trousers. Even in the gloom he could see that the belt around the man's waist was studded with gems, and the fastenings of his sandals glinted like fireflies in the wet grass. The small shiver twitched again at Trehearne's nerves, and he kept his hand in his pocket, over the comforting prosaic weight of the gun. He had thought at first that the man was Kerrel, but he was too short, and the voice was different. Neither spoke again until they had reached a blank corner of the keep well out of sight of the sheds. Then the man stopped and turned, and Trehearne said, "How did you know me?"

Faint light from an embrasure high above fell on the stranger's face. It was a Vardda face, but it was not beautiful. It was ugly, and kind, with very shrewd eyes and a merry mouth that was not really merry at all, even when it smiled. It was smiling now.

"Your fame has come ahead of you." He nodded toward the wall and what was beyond it. "Kerrel says you won't come, Shairn says you will. They're all betting on you in there." He examined Trehearne closely in the dim light, and shook his head. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it. You really are remarkable."

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