Crashlander

There's only one spaceport on We Made It, and the ships don't land every day. Some of us kids used to watch them take off and land. I'm the only one who became a pilot.

What I noticed about the tourists was muscle.

I wasn't undermuscled for a local. Some of the tourists hailed from worlds no more massive than mine, but we got Jinxians and flatlanders, too. They walked like they expected us to shy away from their moving mass. We tall, narrow, fragile crashlander men and women did as they expected, and resented it a little.

Nakamura Lines ran their ships at one Earth gravity. I had to train hard just to walk around on my own ship. Thus trained, I was a superbly muscled athlete by We Made It standards. It was still true that too many passengers looked at my albino pallor and tall, skeletal frame and saw a sickly ghoul.

I'd gotten used to that. Maybe it had left me touchy.

Visceral memory had come flooding back when Ander's hand closed on my arm like a predator's jaws. I hadn't known Ander well. I'd seen him twice in fourteen years, for periods of intense activity of a few weeks each. Now I needed a story to tell to Ander Smittarasheed; but what I remembered best was that I'd disliked him on sight.

Sharrol's seat was empty. Ander settled into it. «You really like these water wars? What guild do you favor?»

«No, Ander, it's not like that. You've seen my homeworld. There's only one ocean on We Made It, and it's all one storm. Nobody swims.»

«So what are we doing here?»

I had come here following a woman's whim, but Ander shouldn't know that. «I don't care who wins. I just get a kick out of watching how good they are.»

But I'd listened to enough of Sharrol's prattling. Water war derived from a game the kzinti played on the continent, on land. In both forms the game is local to Fafnir. No offworld tourist would know of it. I need only open my mouth and let Sharrol speak.

«They all swim like dolphins, don't they? But the dolphins can't grab the prey, they can only push the other players around, except that the Structure Team dolphin has hands. It's an option. But the rig is slowing her down; can you tell? Do you know anything about strategy? They're down to seven teams, looks like —» I saw that he was only waiting for me to stop talking. «Ander, what are you doing on Fafnir?»

«Looking for you.»

«Yeah, I always thought so. You're with the United Nations police.» I need not pretend to like it.

Ander frowned. «Not … exactly. I'm not an ARM. I'm with Sigmund Ausfaller, and Sigmund is an ARM, but he has his own agenda. By which I mean to say I'm not here to bring you back, Beowulf.»

«That's good. I don't want to go back.» I didn't have my story yet, but it would not include wanting to return to Earth. «Why, then?»

«Can you tell me what happened to Feather Filip?»

«It's long and ugly.»

«No problem. I'll take you to di

«Thanks.» It might help me, now or later, if Ander thought I was short of money. Better yet — «There's an item of great value involved, Ander. One I can't touch myself. That, and Feather, and the way I look: they're all linked.»

«Yes. Good,» he said absently. «And, though he never said so to me, Sigmund may have wanted you to know that if you outsmarted the ARM, you did not outsmart Sigmund.»

«I expect he did. Anything else?»

«Oh, yes. I got into this because we were talking about Pierson's puppeteers. Sigmund and I decided that you, Beowulf Shaeffer, know as much about these aliens as any ARM.»

«Hah. Were you sober?»

«And then we worked out where you must be. No, not sober then, but we talked the next morning and didn't change our minds. Beowulf, how did you first learn of the puppeteers?»

«School and the holo cube. We watched a lot of travelogues when we were kids. And we hung around the spaceport, so I knew they make the General Products ships.»

«And your first contact?»

«We wrote that up together. Oh, tanj, Ander! You're recording, aren't you?»

He said, «Yes,» giving me an instant to object, daring me. Who was he recording for? Who was involved in hunting Beowulf Shaeffer? If it was Sigmund Ausfaller … I'd never outguessed Sigmund yet.

Ander said, «We'll pay you a consultant's fee. Ten per hour, Beowulf. Will you accept?»

«How many hours do you need?» It was generous, but my yes would be a verbal contract. I'd be his prisoner.

He waved it off. «Until midnight. Then we can renegotiate. I need the recording for Sigmund.»

Ouch. «Until midnight,» I said, «present time being ten to noon local.»

«Your first contact with Pierson's puppeteers?»

Fifteen years flying passengers between the worlds. Then Nakamura Lines collapsed, and I was on the street … on We Made It, because the bankruptcy courts allowed us transport home. Two years later I was ready to accept an offer from anyone. Anyone …

NEUTRON STAR

The Skydiver dropped out of hyperspace an even million miles above the neutron star. I needed a minute to place myself against the stellar background and another to find the distortion Sonya Laskin had mentioned before she died. It was to my left, an area the apparent size of the Earth's moon. I swung the ship around to face it.

Curdled stars, muddled stars, stars that had been stirred with a spoon.

The neutron star was in the center, of course, though I couldn't see it and hadn't expected to. It was only eleven miles across, and cool. A billion years had passed since BVS-1 had burned by fusion fire. Millions of years, at least, since the cataclysmic two weeks during which BVS-1 was an X-ray star, burning at a temperature of five billion degrees Kelvin. Now it showed only by its mass.

The ship began to turn by itself. I felt the pressure of the fusion drive. Without help from me, my faithful metal watchdog was putting me in a hyperbolic orbit that would take me within one mile of the neutron star's surface. Twenty-four hours to fall, twenty-four hours to rise … and during that time something would try to kill me. As something had killed the Laskins.

The same type of autopilot, with the same program, had chosen the Laskins' orbit. It had not caused their ship to collide with the star. I could trust the autopilot. I could even change its program.

I really ought to.

How did I get myself into this hole?

The drive went off after ten minutes of maneuvering. My orbit was established in more ways than one. I knew what would happen if I tried to back out now.

All I'd done was walk into a drugstore to get a new battery for my lighter!

Right in the middle of the store, surrounded by three floors of sales counters, was the new 2603 Sinclair intrasystem yacht. I'd come for a battery, but I stayed to admire. It was a beautiful job, small and sleek and streamlined and blatantly different from anything that'd ever been built. I wouldn't have flown it for anything, but I had to admit it was pretty. I ducked my head through the door to look at the control panel. You never saw so many dials. When I pulled my head out, all the customers were looking in the same direction. The place had gone startlingly quiet.

I can't blame them for staring. A number of aliens were in the store, mainly shopping for souvenirs, but they were staring, too. A puppeteer is unique. Imagine a headless, three-legged centaur wearing two Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent puppets on its arms and you'll have something like the right picture. But the arms are weaving necks, and the puppets are real heads, flat and brainless, with wide flexible lips. The brain is under a bony hump set between the bases of the necks. This puppeteer wore only its own coat of brown hair, with a mane that extended all the way up its spine to form a thick mat over the brain. I'm told that the way they wear the mane indicates their status in society, but to me it could have been anything from a dockworker to a jeweler to the president of General Products.