Stars' End by Glen Cook

Stars' End by Glen Cook

Author:Glen Cook [Cook, Glen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1982-08-19T16:00:00+00:00


Fourteen: 3050 AD

The Main Sequence

Beckhart’s word proved good. AngelCity was quiet. Central Park, a recreational area at the city’s heart, had been equipped with field tents, trailers, and miscellany the Admiral had borrowed from the Corps. Storm and benRabi set up for business before noon.

“Mouse,” benRabi said, “you get the feeling we’re being rushed?”

“It’s not a feeling, Moyshe. It’s a fact.”

“How do we stall?”

Men with briefcases were lining up to obtain the little catalogs Moyshe’s team had brought along. “Buy time,” Jarl had said. It did not look like they would be given a chance. The various purchasing agents, impelled by the war scare, wanted the bidding to begin right away.

The Marines proved to be perfect policemen. They helped immeasurably. They showed favoritism only to Starfisher tourists. The Admiral seemed determined to avoid a significant incident, and to help the local shopkeepers relieve the Seiner sightseers of all their hard currency.

Storm lost his first tourist their second day on The Broken Wings. The man turned up again before Mouse learned that he had been taken. He was none the worse for wear. He was a mess cook from Danion who knew nothing anyone wanted to know.

“It’s started,” Mouse told benRabi when Moyshe relieved him. “Make sure everybody checks in before they wander off. Check their passes. The ones we have to watch have been given a red one.”

“You know who grabbed the man?”

“No. I didn’t try to find out. I just passed it to Beckhart. I figure we might as well let his people do it. We’ll have more people to watch our criticals.”

Moyshe lost several people on his shift. There was only one incident with anyone who mattered. His people handled it perfectly, and presented the would-be kidnapper to Beckhart’s Marines.

The man turned out to be a frustrated newshawk trying to get around Seiner and Confederation censors. Beckhart booted him off planet.

Days ground by, producing no insoluble problems. The auction bidding was wild. Prime ambergris nodes repeatedly brought record prices. There were rumors that Confederation meant to get a stranglehold on the trade. Outsiders and private industry wanted to grab while the grabbing was good.

That rumor made Moyshe nervous. The way the Admiral shrugged it off, he suspected the Bureau had an angle.

The war scare, if not genuine, was convincing. Confederation and Ulantonid forces were marshaling on the boundaries of the March of Ulant. People were getting scared.

Did they mean to fight one another? Or some third party? The news people were wondering too. Luna Command had been leaking one line of news one week, another the next.

News snoops became Moyshe’s biggest problem. They used every trick to capitalize on an opportunity to approach real Seiners. Moyshe did three interviews himself. Someone had tipped the media that he was a former Bureau agent.

He refused interviews after someone discovered that he and Mouse had been responsible for Jupp von Drachau’s famous raid in the Hell Stars.

Then Seiners ceased to be newsworthy. The sword-rattling on the frontier faded away.

Luna Command had admitted that a secret research station and its entire solar system had been destroyed.



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