Andre Norton - THE STARS ARE OURS

"I talked in my sleep? But I don't!"

"Maybe not under ordinary circumstances. But let our medico get the digester on you and you do. You've had a pretty hard pull, kid, haven't you?"

Dard levered himself up on his elbows and the other slipped extra support behind him. Now he could see that he was stretched out on a narrow cot in a room which seemed to be part cave, for three of its walls were bare rock, the fourth a smooth gray substance cut by a door. There were no windows, and a soft light issued from two tubes in the rock ceiling. His visitor perched on a folding stool and there was no other furniture in the cell-like chamber.

But there were coverings over him such as he had not seen for years, and he was wearing a clean, one piece coverall over a bathed body. He smoothed the top blanket lovingly. "Where is here-and what is here?" he expanded his first question.

"This is the Cleft, the last stronghold, as far as we know, of the Free Men." The other got to his feet and stretched. He was a tall lean-waisted man, with dark brown skin, against which his strong teeth and the china-white of his eyeballs made startling contrast. Curly black hair was cropped very close to his round skull, and he had only a slight trace of beard. "This is the gateway to Ad Astra-" he paused, eyeing Dard as if to assess the effect those last two words had on the boy.

"Ad Astra," Dard repeated. "Lars spoke of that once."

"Ad Astra means 'to the Stars.' And this is the jumping off place."

Dard frowned. To the stars! Not interplanetary-but galactic flight! But that was impossible!

" I thought that Mars and Venus-" he began doubtfully.

"Who said anything about Mars or Venus. kid? Sure, they're impossible. It would take most of the resources of a willing Terra to plant a colony on either of them-as who should know better than I?No, not interplanetary flight- stellar.Go out to take our pick of waiting worlds such as earth creepers never dreamed of, that's what we're going to do! Ad Astra!"

Galactic flight-his first wild guess had been right

"A star ship here!" In spite of himself Dard knew a small thrill far inside his starved body. Men had landed on Mars and Venus back in the days before the Burn and the Purge, discovering conditions on both planets which made them almost impossible for human life without a vast expenditure which Terra was not willing to make. And, of course, Pax had forbidden all space flight as part of the program for stamping out scientific experimentation. Rut a star ship-to break the bounds of Sol's system and go out to find another sun, other planets. It sounded like a very wild dream but he could not doubt the sincerity of the man who had just voiced it.

"But what did Lars have to do with this?" he wondered aloud. Lars' field had been chemistry, not astronomy or the mechanics of space flight. Dard doubted whether his brother could have told one constellation from another.

"He had a very important part. We've just been waiting around for you to wake up to get the report of his findings."

"But I thought you got the full story out of me while I was unconscious."

"What you personally did in the past few days, yes. But you do carry a message from Lars, don't you?" For the first time some of the dark man's lightheadedness vanished.

Dard smoothed the blanket and then plucked at it with nervous fingers. "I don't know-I hope so-"

His companion ran his hands across his tight cap of hair.

"Suppose we have Tas in. He's only been waiting for you to come around." He crossed the room and pushed a wall button.

"By the way," he said over his shoulder, "I'm forgetting introductions. I'm Simba Kimber, Pilot-astrogator Simba Kimber," he repeated that title as if it meant a great deal to him. "And Tas is First Scientist Tas Kordov, biological division. Our organization here is made up of survivors from half a dozen Free Scientist teams as well as quite a few just plain outlaws who are not Pax-minded. Oh, come in, Tas."

The man who entered was short and almost as broad as he was tall. But sturdy muscle, not fat, thickened his shoulders and pillared his arms and legs. He wore the faded uniform of a Free Scientist with the flaming sword of First Rank still to be picked out on the breast. His eyes and broad cheek bones had Tartar contour and Dard believed that he was not a native of the land in which he now lived.

"Well, and now you are awake, oh?" he smiled at Dard.

"We have been waiting for you to open those eyes-and that mouth of yours-young man. What word do you bring from Lars Nordis?"

Dard could hesitate about telling the full truth no longer.

"I don't know whether I have anything or not. The night the roundup gang came Lars said he had finished his job-"

"Good!" Tas Kordov actually clapped his hands.

"But when we had to clear out he didn't lay to bring any papers with him-"

Kordov's face was avid as if he would drag what he wanted out of Dard by force. "But he gave to you some message-surely he gave some message!"

"Only one thing. And I don't know how important that may be. I'll have to have something to write on to explain properly."

"Is that all?" Kordov pulled a notebook out of his breeches' pocket and flipped it open to a blank page, handing it to him with an inkless stylus. Dard, equipped with the tools, began the explanation which neither of these men might believe.

"It goes way back. Lars knew that I imagine words as designs. That is, if I hear a poem, it makes a pattern for me-" he paused trying to guess from their expressions whether they understood. Somehow it didn't sound very sensible, now.

Kordov pulled his lower lip away from his yellowish teeth and allowed it to snap back. "Hmm-semantics are not my field. But I believe that I can follow what you mean. Demonstrate!"

Feeling foolish, Dard recited Dessie's jingle, marking out the pattern on the page.

"Eesee, Osee, Icksie, Ann; Fullson, Follson, Orson, Cann."

He underlined, accented, and overlined, as he had that evening on the farm and Dessie's kicking legs came into being again.

"Lars saw me do this. He was quite excited about it. And then he gave me another two lines, which for me do not make the same pattern. But he insisted that this pattern be fitted over his lines."

"And those other lines?" demanded Tas.

Dard repeated the words aloud as be jotted them down.

"Seven, nine, four and ten; twenty, sixty and seven again."

Carefully he fitted the lines through and about the numbers and handed the result to Kordov. To him it made no possible sense, and if it didn't to the First Scientist, then he would not have had Lars' precious secret at all. When Tas continued to frown down at the page, Dard lost the small flicker of confidence he had had.

"Ingenious," muttered Kimber looking over the First Scientist's shoulder. "Could be a code."

"Yes," Tas was going to the door. "I must study it. And look upon the other notes again. I must-"

With that he was gone. Dard sighed.

"It probably doesn't mean a thing," he said wearily. "But what should it be?"

"The formula for the 'cold sleep,' " Kimber told him.

"Cold sleep?"

"We go to sleep, hibernate, during that trip-or else the ship comes to its port manned by dust! Even with all the improvements they have given her the new drive-everything-our baby isn't going to make the big jump in one man's lifetime, or in a number of lifetimes!" Kimber paced back and forth as he talked, turning square corners at either end of the room. "In fact, we didn't have a chance-we'd begun thinking of trying to make a stand on Mars-before one of our men accidentally discovered Lars Nordis was alive. Before the purge he'd published one paper concerning his research on the circulatory system of bats-studying the drop in their body temperature during their winter sleep. Don't ask me about it, I'm only a pilot-astrogator, not a Big Brain! But he was on the track of something Kordov believed might be done-the freezing of a human being so that he can remain alive but in sleep indefinitely. And since we contacted him, Lars has continued to feed us data bit by bit."