The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

case, and stood for a moment eyeing the selection of past voyage records. With a tongue-click of satisfaction he pulled out another and tossed it across the desk to Dane.
    “See what you can make out of this tangle,” he ordered. But Dane’s shoulders went back as if some weighthad been lifted from them. The old easiness was still lacking, but he was no longer exiled to the outer darkness of Van Rycke’s displeasure.
    Holding the microtape as if it were a first grade Koros stone Dane went back to his own cabin, snapped the tape into his reader, adjusted the ear buttons and lay back on his bunk to listen.
    He was deep in the intricacy of a deal so complicated that he was lost after the first two moves, when he opened his eyes to see Ali at the door panel. The Engineer-apprentice made an emphatic beckoning wave and Dane slipped off the ear buttons.
    “What is it?” His question lacked a cordial note.
    “I’ve got to have help.” Ali was terse. “Kosti’s blacked out!”
    “What!” Dane sat up and dropped his feet to the deck in almost one movement.
    “I can’t shift him alone,” Ali stated the obvious. The giant jetman was almost double his size. “We must get him to his quarters. And I won’t ask Stotz—”
    For a perfectly good reason Dane knew. An assistant—two of the apprentices—could go sick, but their officers’ continued good health meant the most to the Queen. If some infection were aboard it would be better for Ali and himself to be exposed, than to have Johan Stotz with all his encyclopedic knowledge of the ship’s engines contract any disease.
    They found the jetman half sitting, half lying in the short foot or so of corridor which led to his own cubby. He had been making for his quarters when the seizure had taken him. And by the time the two reached his side, he was beginning to come around, moaning, his hands going to his head.
    Together they got him on his feet and guided him to his bunk where he collapsed again, dead weight they hadto push into place. Dane looked at Ali—
    “Tau?”
    “Haven’t had time to call him yet.” Ali was jerking at the thigh straps which fastened Kosti’s space boots.
    “I’ll go.” Glad for the task Dane sped up the ladder to the next section and threaded the narrow side hall to the Medic’s cabin where he knocked on the panel.
    There was a pause before Craig Tau looked out, deep lines of weariness bracketing his mouth, etched between his eyes.
    “Kosti, sir,” Dane gave his bad news quickly. “He’s collapsed. We got him to his cabin—”
    Tau showed no sign of surprise. His hand shot out for his kit.
    “You touched him?” At the other’s nod he added an order. “Stay in your quarters until I have a chance to look you over—understand?”
    Dane had no chance to answer, the Medic was already on his way. He went to his own cabin, understanding the reason for his imprisonment, but inwardly rebelling against it. Rather than sit idle he snapped on the reader—but, although facts and figures were dunned into his ears—he really heard very little. He couldn’t apply himself—not with a new specter leering at him from the bulkhead.
    The dangers of the space lanes were not to be numbered, death walked among the stars a familiar companion of all spacemen. And to the Free Trader it was the extra and invisible crewman on every ship that raised. But there were deaths and deaths—And Dane could not forget the gruesome legends Van Rycke collected avidly as his hobby—had recorded in his private library of the folk lore of space.
    Stories such as that of the ghostly “New Hope” carrying refugees from the first Martian Rebellion—the ship which had lifted for the stars but had never arrived, which wandered for a timeless eternity, a derelict in free fall, its port closed but the warning “dead” lights on at its nose—a ship which through five centuries had been sighted only by a spacer in similar distress. Such stories were numerous. There were other tales of “plague” ships wandering free with their dead crews, or discovered and shot into some sun by a patrol cruiser so that they might not carry their infection farther. Plague—the nebulous “worst” the Traders had to face. Dane screwed his eyes shut, tried to concentrate upon the droning voice in his ears, but he could not control his thoughts nor—his fears.
    At a touch on his arm he started so wildly that he jerked the cord loose from the reader and sat up, somewhat