E. Tubb - Symbol of Terra

He frowned as he heard Mirza's demand.

"No."

"Why not? I can help. How did you intend to travel?"

"I've a ship."

"Where? What? Your own working as a trader or one you intend to charter? Whatever it is I've a better one waiting on the field at this moment. The Kasse. I can have it ready to leave by midnight."

"I won't be ready by then."

"Get ready. What do you need? Supplies? Goods? Weapons? Give me a list and I'll have them loaded from the Karroum warehouse. Damn it, man, why do you hesitate? I've the ship, the supplies, the crew-"

"No crew," said Chenault. "I'll use my own."

"Why? Who do you have?" She glanced at Dumarest then back at Chenault. "What's the mystery?"

Dumarest waited then, as the silence lengthened, he said, "Tell her."

"No. She-no!"

"We're hunting a legend," said Dumarest. "Chasing a ghost. One we may never find but the search itself will be rewarding enough." He saw by her expression she had grasped his meaning. "And the sooner we go the better. Time is against us. It could be fatal to wait too long." Another message but this time with meaning to Chenault also. "I think it would be stupid not to take advantage of what has been offered. Others may think so too. If they do the search is over before it begins."

Mirza said, "And you, Earl?"

"If you go then I go with you." One way to escape the trap Lychen had become and, while they were together, he was safe from her betrayal. "Tomorrow, you said?"

"No!" Chenault slammed his fist on the table. "You can't! We have an agreement!"

"One based on mutual help. The two sides of a coin, remember? I help you and you help me-but what help are you stuck in a chair? How long am I supposed to wait?"

"If you leave me you'll lose-"

"Nothing." Dumarest was harsh. "I lose nothing — you can't lose what you've never had. It's your decision, Chenault. Make up your mind."

He leaned forward across the table with a face the other remembered. One he had seen before when steel had flashed at his torso to cut the artificial flesh of his arm. The face of a killer attacking a machine but one just as willing to attack the man behind it. One too dangerous to be frustrated for long.

"All right." Chenault voiced his surrender. "She can come with us."

"Good. I'll order the Kasse to be readied for flight." Mirza glanced at Dumarest. "Give me a list of what we'll need. And we'll use my crew-I don't trust amateurs in the Burdinnion. Where are we heading?"

"Ryzam. It's a place on a world somewhere. Chenault knows where it is."

"So do I. It's Skedaka on the far edge of the Burdinnion." She looked from one to the other. "Are you serious? Is that the ghost you're hunting? The legend of Ryzam?"

Dumarest said, bitterly, "The place of eternal youth. Of endless health and vitality and all the rest of it. Now you say it's a matter of common knowledge."

"Not common, but it's known. By spacers and traders and those who live on Skedaka. A lot of people have tried to find it." She paused, looking at them both. "A lot of people," she repeated. "But none who reached it has ever returned."

Captain Lauter was a broad, thick-set man, old, experienced, loyal to the Karroum, more than loyal to Mirza Annette. From the depths of his big pilot's chair he lifted a hand to point at the screen before him.

"There," he said. "Skedaka."

A world which was a child of death; seared, torn, gouged, warped by the tremendous cataclysm which had created the Burdinnion. Standing beside the chair Dumarest studied the image set against the background of stars. One which seemed disfigured, diseased, blotched and mottled with drab colors.

"Where's the Ryzam?"

"There." Again Lauter pointed. "That patch to the north."

The image swelled as he increased the magnification, growing to almost fill the screen, the patch looking like a crusted scab on leprous flesh. One composed of soaring spires, jagged, edged with sawlike serrations as if rock had been rendered molten then flung upwards to solidify in flight to form a pattern resembling the gigantic bristles of a monstrous brush.

"You can't land on it," said Lauter. "No clear space for one thing and the forces which stream from it for another. Get to within a certain height and the generators fail. Some ships tried it. None came back."

"None?"

Lauter said, dryly, "It happens about five miles up. When the ships hit the ground-" He clapped his hands together, the sound sharp in the control room. "We'll have to find a spot well clear of the area."

A good spot and a safe one; Lauter had a high regard for his vessel. Dumarest watched as the image shifted, shrank to normal size, looking forlorn and alone in the bright immensity of the cosmos.

"You've been here before, Captain?"

"Yes."

"Then you've heard of the legend. Do you believe in it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not a fool." Lauter was blunt. "Ryzam is unusual, that I'll admit, but so are a thousand other places on as many worlds. Most of them have legends, tales, stories invented in taverns and spread by the credulous. Usually it's because the natives want to encourage tourists and the money they bring. Expeditions, even. Skedaka is no different. People live there, poor devils trying to scratch a living from dirt that's mostly ash. Sometimes they find gems and rare metals and there's a kind of herb which grows wild. Maybe the legend grew from that-the stuff can give energy and tighten the skin so as to reduce wrinkles. Instant youth. It doesn't last though no one down there will admit that. They have a vested interest in maintaining the legend. In the town they'll sell you everything you need to explore Ryzam. Maps, guns, everything. Sell," he repeated. "They never hire."

"Because no one ever comes back?"

"That's right."

"Do you know why?"

For answer Lauter magnified the image again, this time larger than before, the scab shown in greater detail, accentuating its bleak harshness.

"A maze," said the captain. "Go into it and it's certain you'll get lost. No food. No water. There could be predators and God alone knows what else. The only thing you can be sure of is that there's nothing to find. I guess, when the searchers realize that, they've passed the point of no return."

A facile answer; one to be expected from a man who had spent his life in the ordered confines of a ship, the predictable regions of space. Yet Chenault with his dream was just as bad; his obsession blinding him to what could be an obvious explanation.

He sat in the salon of the vessel together with Mirza and the others; Toetzer, Lopakhin, Massak, Shior. Hilary was with Govinda, and Toyanna, together with Baglioni, was in the cabin holding the casket. Working at the major task of keeping Chenault alive while, in the salon, he planned the next steps of the operation.

"We shall land to the north," he said. "Opposite to the town. The section we want is marked by a cluster of spires resembling a pair of lifted hands. We must pass between them to a space shaped like a star."

Massak said, "And then?"

"Once we have reached it I'll give further instructions as to direction."

"No." Dumarest stepped into the room and up to the table at which the others sat. "That isn't good enough. So far we've followed you blind but no longer. I want to know why you think you can succeed when so many others have failed."

"Because I have information they lacked." Chenault rested his hand on the papers before him. "Ryzam is a mystery, a trap for the unwary, as events have proved. But one man found the solution to the problem and set it down in his journal. I have the relevant passages from it here. Lydo Agutter was an educated and knowledgeable man. I say 'was' but the chances are that he is still alive. He discovered the truth and set the details down in his book. I have them here."