Chapter 3

Did that truth go back fifteen years, to the time he had met the kqyres, twenty years to the time he had first seen Lyddy? Or even further back than that? Did it go back, say, twenty-four years, to the time when he was sixteen and had killed his stepfather? He could still see Karl Brodek lying there with his head crushed, could still feel the terror rising in him at what he had done...

Then he had turned and fled the small community on Fairhurst--one of the Clytemnestra planets--and made for the capital, where he shipped out on one of the small tramp freighters that voyaged among the planets of that system. None of the four other planets was human-inhabitable, but two had mining stations, and one had a native civilization advanced enough to make trading practicable, though not very profitable.

For the next four years, he drifted from one tenth-rate ship to another, one ill-paid job to another. In all this time, he never left the Clytemnestra System. As soon as he was satisfied that his former neighbors were not going to set the law on his trail, he had no desire to go away. It wasn’t place-liking that kept him; it was dread of the Jump.

Most spacemen never do quite get over their dread of the hyperspace Jump, but with Len the dread amounted almost to a mania. He was ashamed of the feeling, especially since he suspected he’d picked up that extra dollop of terror from the creatures on the native planet.

Self-respecting colonials didn’t associate with non-humans, but during those first years of fear that his fellow men were hunting him, he’d felt safe only with the flluska. He learned a little of their language, and he spent such spare time as he had on Liman, their planet. He couldn’t breathe the atmosphere, but there were the trading domes; nobody minded if he used them when there was no trade going on.

The flluska were a religious people, with gods and demons similar to those of the terrestrial cosmogonies. Only, while their gods lived conventionally in the sky, their demons lived in hyperspace. Len was too unsophisticated himself to wonder how so primitive a people could have evolved such a concept as hyperspace in their theology. He merely grew to share their terror of it.

The year Len was twenty, the Perseus, one of the star freighters that made the long haul from Castor to Capella, found itself in Fairhurst Station short one deckhand. The man they’d shipped out with was in jail, waiting to see whether a manslaughter or assault charge was going to be lodged against him. The ship could not afford to wait. The station was scoured for a replacement and Len Mattern was the best man they could find.

Normally the starships did not take on untrained hands. Even the lowliest crewman was supposed to have spent a minimum number of years at the space schools, because in theory, all promotions came from the ranks, even in the merchant service. But in spite of his lack of training, they offered him the job. The bigline ships never liked to sail shorthanded; in case of trouble, that could be a basis for legal action.

Len knew the opportunity offered him was a dazzling one--not only far more money than he’d ever seen before, but the chance of breaking out of the system. He was afraid though, terribly afraid. “I’ve never made the Jump,” he told the second officer in a quavering voice.

“You’ll never be a real spaceman until you do.” The second officer was patient, because he knew Mattern was his only chance of making the crew up to its full complement.

“I’ve heard tell that--things change their shapes in Hyperspace.”

“Maybe they do; maybe it’s their real shapes you see out there. Who’s to tell what the truth is?”

Len licked dry lips and tried again. “They say there’re people--beings, anyway--living in hyperspace.” That tale he had heard from spacemen who had made the Jump. Even if he’d believed in the flluska’s demons, he would have had the good sense not to admit such a thing to a starship officer--a man of sophistication from the Near Planets, perhaps even Earth herself. Still, spacemen were notorious myth-spinners. Perhaps he had made a fool of himself, anyway.

But the second officer wasn’t laughing. “Federation law says we should have nothing to do with the creatures of hyperspace. If we leave them alone, they don’t bother us.”

It would have been better if the officer had laughed at him and said there was nothing in hyperspace but space. “Will we see them?”

“Does a ship going through ordinary space see any of us?” the officer returned. “The creatures of hyperspace live on their own planets, and we give those planets a wide berth. Simple as that.” He added, “What are you so afraid of, boy? Not a ship’s been lost in hyperspace for over two centuries, and there haven’t been any blowups for years.”

“Blowups?” Len repeated.

“Accidents. A technical term. You’ve taken worse risks shipping out in those tincan tramps.”

Finally, Len gave in--to his own common sense more than to the officer’s--and signed up for the voyage. He filled out the necessary forms--hundreds of them, it seemed like. When it came to each line for next of kin, he left a blank on every one.