Andre Norton - Derelict For Trade

So Dane resigned himself to following a torturous path to Nunku’s hideout—when a piercing whistle echoed up from somewhere.

Tooe caught hold of a thin cable and stopped.

The sound came again, a high, weird note dropping down to another. Dane felt his neck bristle, and he flexed his hands. Now his danger sense was going into hyper—and from the looks of Tooe, it wasn’t just his imagination.

The little Rigelian darted to one of the adits, her crest flattened out in anger mode.

"That our call," she said quickly. "Danger—Shver hunt!"

"Shver hunt?" Dane repeated.

Tooe paid him no attention. She was very still, head angled to listen.

The sound came again, fainter, and this time Tooe sprang to a half-blocked shaft, and sped up inside.

She was going off to the rescue, with no weapons, no aid but Dane. Cursing himself for not having gotten a sleeprod, at least, he pushed after for a few seconds, his mind rapidly making and discarding plans.

A sharp turn in another old shaft and the Spin Axis opened up around them again, into a complicated space filled with angular cargo pods lashed to a confusion of pipes and tiedowns. Here too was the fog, and the air was cold. The whistle was suddenly very near. Tooe flicked out her skinny arm, and she and Dane watched as a squat being scooted by, ricocheting in terror-inspired grace off the cargo pods. As the victim disappeared from sight, there was a rumble of deep voices, and eight or ten Shver appeared, wearing some kind of jet-packs. In the dim lighting Dane could see that these Shver were young, and wealthy, and they all

carried vicious-looking force blades. Anger burned inside him: eight heavyweights against a small being scarcely larger than Tooe!

"You stay." Tooe’s voice was reedy with fear. "My nest-mate Momo, I help—"

"Wait," Dane murmured. "Can you get us ahead of them somehow?"

She whipped around and stared after Momo and the chasers, as if figuring a vector on the probable path. Then she nodded, her crest flicking into hope mode.

"Then get me there ahead, and we’ll have a little fun, if I’ve figured this right," Dane said, scanning the pipes running through the chamber.

Dane never did figure out how she did it; perhaps the adrenaline of the chase effaced the memory, but in a very few minutes, after a dizzying flight through interstices he would have sworn were too small for him, they were back in the foggy tunnel. He could hear the whistle of terror from Momo coming closer, and, fainter, the brutal laughter of the pursuing Shver. Dane pulled himself along as fast as he dared, scanning the tunnel walls until he spotted what he’d hoped for: the leaking pipe from which the fog was billowing. Fortunately, it was inert cryo again, for there was suddenly no time left as Momo rocketed past and, with no further warning, the Shver were upon them.

The bulky beings stopped, nonplussed. He saw them squint, trying to see through the fog veiling him and Tooe. Then the one in the lead smiled, evidently seeing easy prey. It jetted forward slowly, waving the others back, its force knife humming shrilly as it pointed the weapon square at Dane’s head.

Dane didn’t move, and noted approvingly that Tooe didn’t either. He flexed the toes of his right foot very slightly, checking that his foot was still firmly hooked under a cable.

"Vanish you, or be prey," the foremost Shver growled, his posture arrogant.

Dane didn’t answer. Instead, as the Shver lunged at him, he twisted down and aside by pulling up his right leg, and, as he rocketed down, chopped savagely at the leaking pipe with his left hand and yanked

sideways on it with his right, pushing hard against the tunnel wall with all the strength in his legs.

With a shrill screech of tortured metal the pipe ruptured and the liquid nitrogen jetted out straight at his attacker, the roar of its release suddenly augmented by a basso scream of agony from the Shver.

"Now!" shouted Dane, and they flew off down the tunnel. As they swung around a corner he looked back and bile suddenly spurted into his throat. Out of the boiling fog that veiled the confused panic of the Shver a small object looped toward them: a severed hand, frost covered, the force knife still humming in its rigid grasp. As he watched, frozen with a mixture of horror and triumph, the hand hit the bulkhead a few feet away and shattered into dust.

Dane felt a tug at his arm. "Trounced rascal knaves, you," she crowed; then her crest flattened as she saw his expression. She shook her head. "Won’t bleed, him. Saw freeze wound once—lots of time, medic fix."

Dane pushed off and followed her, shocked less by the sight than the violence his actions had revealed in him. Then he thought of the Ariadne . What if the Queen had been attacked? The thought made him feel a little better, but he was still subdued when they caught up with Momo.

The little being was a kind of humanoid Dane had never seen before. He was small, squat, and his skin was red— almost crimson; Dane wondered what influence in his environment could have created that. At first Momo was sobbing, and Tooe made consoling noises. When Momo was able to gulp back his tears, he and Tooe held a rapid conversation in Kanddoyd, snapping and tapping their fingers in complicated rhythms to accentuate their speech.

Dane followed along behind, doing his best to follow the flow of words. The Kanddoyd they spoke seemed highly idiomatic, or else had been adapted over time for the benefit of physiologies different from Kanddoyd.

Suddenly they both turned to Dane, and Momo said in Kanddoyd-accented Terran, "Gracious and forever gratitude to Terran visitor, my honor to give to you." He lifted both hands to his head and covered his eyes with his thumbs, flickering his fingers in a gesture which Dane recognized as an analogue for the respectful clacking of Kanddoyd mandibles.

"Glad to help," he said, feeling awkward.

"We conduct honored rescuer to Nunku," Momo said.

Dane bit his lip. Wasn’t that where Tooe had intended to take him all along? For a moment his suspicions rose again, to disappear when he realized that the two were taking him on a straight route, rather than the circuitous one Tooe had embarked on at first.

Warm air and the deep droning of vast engines, more a vibration than a sound, indicated they were somewhere in the vicinity of the great motors for the ventilators that kept the air moving in the Spin Axis. The air smelled slightly metallic, but was fresh enough, and unlike the still air in the abandoned storage areas, this ruffled gently across his skin, making it clear that someone had seen to circulation.

They passed a jumble of ancient hull metal and other discarded parts of spaceships. Twice Tooe made calling sounds, but there were no answers this time. Warnings, Dane thought. Before, she was signaling for permission to enter other gangs’ territories, and now she was letting her own gang know she was coming.

I wonder if the signal says anything about me , he thought as they floated down into a vast circular room, well lit from an astonishing variety of lighting equipment scavenged from several centuries’ choices of styles.

At once eight or ten beings appeared, ricocheting down with bizarre grace from the network of catwalks and cables stretching everywhere, all of them raggedly dressed in ill-fitting spacer castoffs. They represented biologies from an astonishingly wide range of systems, all humanoid, but that was the only common bond.

The one that drew the eye was a very weird creature indeed. Her head seemed much too large for her body, but Dane realized after a second look that her head was normal in size. The thin, strangely elongated body inside the tattered old robe was not. It was as if a child’s body had been stretched out to ten or twelve feet. Such a person would have to live in free fall, Dane realized as Tooe eagerly drew him forward. She could never stand on her own in normal gravity.