Jack Vance: The Five Gold Bands

Then, keeping the little asteroid between himself and the five ships as long as possible he turned the accelerator on full and the little ship fell out, out, out-into the deep well of space with stars flickering the shiny pebbles at the bottom.

Now-on with the space-drive and he was safe. Safe!

He slumped back into the seat, fell into a torpor…

Paddy looked about his ship, letting the sight of glossy metal and glass, the fittings, fabrics, the exquisite equipment gladden his vision, luxuriating in the surroundings like a gourmet rolling the flavor of a fine sauce through his mouth.

Paddy rose from the couch, stretched like one reborn. The boat was a new life, a symbol of rebirth. His past seemed remote as if only a tenuous wisp linked Paddy Blackthorn of the Akhabats jail and Paddy Blackthorn standing on the deck-covering of crisp scarlet eggshell pile.

Paddy clapped his arms to his sides, grinned with honest joy. Not only was he free with his life-enough to rejoice about-but he had played a devastating joke on his would-be slayers. A magnificent joke to make his name one for history. It was the pattern of circumstances that exactly filled a socket in the human brain, the biter bit, the bully tripped up by the underdog in a gutter full of slops.

Paddy strolled here and there, surveyed his prize. It seemed to be engineered less for cruising than for use as an interplanetary pleasure-boat. It carried no large supply of stores, no arsenal.

The fittings were of a quality and precision befitting the ceremonial boat of the Sons of Langtry. The joinerwork was a rare wood from a far planet, showing a grain of black and golden-green. There was a brown-violet matanne upholstery on the couch and the scarlet carpet with the pile that was like stepping on candied rose-petals.

Paddy returned to the pilot's platform, studied the astrogation instruments. A boat of this type, with no cost spared on its construction would embody new equipment, much of which might be unfamiliar to him. And as he glanced along the panel he found levers, dials, arms, whose use he did not comprehend. He left them untouched. For all he knew one might set off an emergency SOS call.

He turned to the wide couch, inspected the shiny heap of his loot-five bands of gold, each with a thin square compartment. Paddy stood back with a sensation close to awe. "Here," he said, "is the treasure of the ages, which all the wealth of Earth would buy cheap… And it's me, Paddy Blackthorn, who handles these lovelies.

"But now let's open them and we'll see how to curl space-drive into them shiny tubes so next time there won't be that great explosion…"

He snapped off the lid of the first, withdrew a bit of stiff parchment. It was imprinted with heavy Badaic letters: The Kamborogian Arrowhead Suite 10 The Foolish Man's Inclination Page 100

Paddy raised his eyebrows high. "And what's this?" He was thunderstruck, apprehensive. Was there some colossal error?

"Ah, well," said Paddy, "now we'll see." He opened the second band.

Like the first it contained a bit of parchment, written in Pherasic script which Paddy could not read. He passed on to the third, which was stamped with the neat Shaul cuneiform: Corescens, the back wall. Three up, two over Irradiate with angstroms 685, 1444, 2590, 3001. Photograph.

Paddy groaned, opened the fourth band. It held a key, engraved with the Loristanese loops and lines, nothing more. Paddy tossed it aside.

The parchment in the Koton band read: The Plain of Thish, where Arma-Geth shows the heroes to the wondering stars. Under my mighty right hand.

Paddy flung himself back on the couch. "A bloody treasure-hunt, that's what!" he cried. "And to think I've risked all for the only clues. Well, then, by Fergus, I'll fling them from the port and have done with it!"

But he folded the four parchment slips carefully around the key, and replaced them in one of the bands, which he fitted on his own wrist.

"Now for home." thought Paddy. "Peace and quiet and no more of this space-rampaging-and yet-" He rubbed his chin dubiously. He was by no means safe. He had escaped the asteroid with his skin, but the Langtry ships swarmed space like wasps in a shed.

He was safe from the rear. But was he safe from interception? Space-wave messages flew as swiftly as thought. The description of the boat and Paddy's personal coordinates would reach every outpost in space. Paddy would be the quarry of the universe. Ordinary misdeeds would go unchallenged while the authorities combed the worlds for Paddy Blackthorn.

Exultation waned to fretful uneasiness. In his mind's-eye he saw the placards, tacked up in every saloon, every post office, every transportation agency in the known universe-displaying his picture and the caption-

wanted- for interplanetary crime! Paddy Blackthorn, Earther. Dangerous! Height, six feet; weight, one hundred eighty pounds. Age, approximately thirty. Red-brown hair, hazel eyes, broken nose.

"And then," grumbled Paddy, "there'll be my fingerprints, my tongueprint, my psychograph. They'll describe the hairs of my head and they'll write at the bottom, 'Catch this fiend and name your own reward.' I'm cursed with the luck of the devil himself. There's no haven for me on Earth, no place for me but the Thieves' Cluster-and then how long?"

He rummaged through the chart index, found the proper code, punched the buttons and in front of him, projected by a series of lenses, appeared the sphere of space surrounding the Thieves' Cluster.

At the edge a blue gleam of light indicated his own position with a white arrow indicating the vector of his position and course. Paddy sighted, gingerly changed course until the vector pointed at the Thieves' Cluster.

He turned on the space-wave. It was staccato with coded messages. Let 'em rave, thought Paddy. Once in the Thieves' Cluster, not even the Sons of Langtry could drag him forth. Of course they might send agents in to assassinate him. But would they? He was the only man alive who knew, if not the secret of space-drive, the whereabouts of the secret.

The Thieves' Cluster was a group of eight suns in the Perseian Limbo which had picked up a jostling swarm of dark stars, planets, planetoids, asteroids, meteorites, and general debris. Here was end-haven for the lost men of all worlds. Among the hundred thousand satellites a man could dodge a low-boat like a rabbit ducking a dog in a mile of blackberry thicket.

If he cared nothing for the life of the settled planets, if he had money to pay for his stores, if he could protect himself, then he could live his life among the jostling little worlds with small fear of civilized justice.

There was no law in the Thieves' Cluster except at Eleanor on the central planet Spade-Ace. Here a government of sorts existed-an order of men forced to cooperate by fear and despair, a society of the antisocial. The executive committee of the government was the Blue-nose Gang, after Blue-nose Pete, mayor of Eleanor.

At Eleanor the strictest law in the universe was enforced. If a man could win to the Eleanor space-field he could sleep in an alley with his loot on his chest and when he awoke his gold would be there. The apparatus was clumsy and harsh but if a man violated the law of Eleanor the Gang would have his life.

Paddy slipped through the crush of flaming suns and bright worlds without hindrance, fell against the swampy side of Spade-Ace, leveled off, flew screaming a few miles above the reed-covered morass. A ridge of black rock rose at the horizon. He crossed it and below him was Eleanor, a spatter of white and brown at the base of the mountain.

He dropped to the field beside the alteration docks, where a Badau double-monitor lay half-dismantled.

He jumped out of the domed boat, ran across the field to the line of ships at the boundary. At a hydrant he flung himself down, turned on the water, drank, drank, drank.