Andre Norton - Derelict For Trade

The man lay quiescent, so she proceeded with her treatment. After a minute or so he sighed. "Already feels better," he said. He stirred, was about to push away, then he half turned and muttered, his posture partly hostile and partly shamefaced, "You know what I been doin’ since I got up here, right?"

She shook her head. "Existing," she replied. "That’s all that matters right now."

He touched her hand. "Thankee, Doctor."

And he was gone, replaced by a tall, feline being who looked like an Arvas. She had a missing limb. This time Tooe translated as the being talked in a sibilant murmur. Rael cleared her scanner and called up the data on the Arvas race, then moved it slowly over the female as Tooe told in her peculiar mix of languages a story that was disturbingly like Akortu’s.

The amputated limb could not be helped—it was an old wound—but the being was suffering from a severe mineral deficiency, a mineral crucial to her race but unused by the Shver, Kanddoyds, or humans. Rael had some in her pack, and gave the Arvas a sprayjection, promising to try to obtain more.

The next story was even more disturbing; this was one of Tooe’s gang, who were mostly young. This being had been accidentally left behind when his family departed on a Trade run. It was merely a prank, and he did receive a message from the first stop that they were returning for him—but after that his family’s ship seemed to have vanished from the universe. Trade insisted they had no record of their movements; meanwhile he was running up a debt that could only be worked off in a work camp—so he panicked and ran.

That had been five Standard years ago.

The stories were taking on some unsettling similarities, Rael thought as she worked tirelessly to mend diseased or battered sentients from an astonishing variety of backgrounds. Even granted that some were lying, it still added up to a statistically impossible set of coincidences.

She worked without recourse to her chrono, until her back felt like it was on fire and her arms got so tired she could scarcely control her instruments. And finally she ran out of supplies, and got Tooe to promise that they would return again, and she packed up, quietly turning off the recorder she had secreted in her pack.

In silence she and Tooe retreated to the Queen .

In silence she boarded. Jellico was suddenly there, his hard gray eyes searching, but he asked no questions, just pointed to her cabin.

She made it down, and meant to shower, but instead she lay on her bunk to rest her eyes, and finally the tears came. She wept because she was tired, because she couldn’t possibly help them all, because of some terrible, vast injustice whose cost in terms of the innocent might not be solvable. She wept because the universe didn’t seem to care, and when she was empty, she dropped into a deep sleep, and dreamed of a weird chamber, and endless lines of broken, hopeless beings turning to her for succor.

Craig Tau stowedhis kit aboard the shuttle, and watched as the Starvenger spun out of view, bringing the vast bulk of the habitat across the viewport. Beyond hung a gray hopeless arc of light, the marginal planet below that served merely as a spacetime anchor for the orbiting habitats. Just a hole in space, Craig thought, shaking his head. Microgravity was stressing them all—he sometimes wondered if they shouldn’t adopt Tooe’s disorienting approach, and give up the battle to pretend acceleration. Though he had noted that the four younger men were using their magboots a lot less often than they had on first arriving. The four apprentices seemed to be adjusting the quickest to the stressfully unnatural biorhythms of habitat life and the bewildering amount of strange and new technology surrounding them.

The vast bay of the habitat swallowed the shuttle. Now Craig felt like he was diving up into the maelstrom of ships and lights and machinery and little service vessels, a ceaseless dance of commerce.

But he wasn’t watching the activity outside; it was mere backdrop to his thoughts. He’d spent his two days reviewing his initial observations of what he had begun to call the Esperite Effect, and writing up his recent experiences. This was not an easy chore. He was scrupulously careful to report precisely what he had seen and heard, registering his interpretations and hypotheses on another field. At times his text was cluttered with the tiny icons indicating his own views, which totaled three times the wordage of his lab reports. This was fine. It meant someday he might get a clue to what was going on.

It was also preferable to resisting the impulse to reorganize the Starvenger's lab into a replica of the Solar Queen's . He noted rather sadly that the others had stopped taking little items over with them for their two-day stints and then leaving them; he recorded this too, reflecting on how the Starvenger had begun, incrementally, to metamorphose into their territory—a process which had halted with Ya’s news about the conflicting abandonment dates and the mysterious Ariadne .

When the shuttle reached the Queen , he went directly down to his quarters to copy his notes into his lab computer, and to make a general status check. The cats were fine, and there were no weird illnesses or nasty accidents recorded in the sick bay log. In fact, there were no notes at all for the past eighteen hours—and, he discovered, a mighty dent had been

made in the supplies.

So Rael had made her foray into Spin Axis territory. He wondered how successful she’d been, and went back to check the log for her report. Nothing.

Alarm kindled in him. Had she returned? He crossed the lab toward the up-ladder hatchway just as Rael Cofort emerged from her cabin.

Tau backed inside, frowning at the signs of stress marking her fine skin and expressive eyes. He was about to ask her for a report when she stopped, standing very still, her gaze distracted, and a moment later there was the familiar firm tread of the captain’s boots on the deckplates.

"Are you all right?" Jellico addressed Cofort abruptly.

"Of course," Rael said, turning to face the outer corridor.

"Tooe tells us you are planning to go back up there."

"I have to," Rael said. "There’s a need."

"Would you obey if I forbid it?"

Cofort smiled, just slightly, but her voice was cool. "I’d have to," she said. "You’re the captain, I’m new crew, and not so high in the hierarchy. But before this conversation goes any further, answer me this: would you forbid Craig to go?"

Tau heard a short intake of breath, followed by a long pause. The medic realized first that the captain did not know he was there, and second, though there was nothing personal in the words he heard, the conversation was private.

He was about to retreat back to his lab when Rael Cofort broke it off by turning away from the captain, who was still not in view, and coming inside. After a moment the captain followed, his face impassive except for a tightening along his jaw.

Tau bent to pick up Omega, who instantly began to purr. He straightened up slowly, aware of the magboots imprisoning his feet against the deck. It sometimes took an effort of will not to imagine oneself hanging from the ceiling—there was no sense of one’s feet pressing against the deck.

"I’ll make my report," Cofort said to Tau, "while you get your update."

Tau turned to the captain, who gave him a terse rundown on the latest news in their mystery. Tau listened to the talk of computer ferrets and lists, but he didn’t pay much attention. There were other crew members better qualified to interpret that data. Instead he sifted the captain’s words for how the news was taking its toll on the crew.