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  “They wouldn’t believe me, and they left me to rot on this damned world. Now they are seeking me out because they are afraid, because the Times are drawing nearer and the Masters are grumbling, because they are discovering the Accursed Worlds one by one.”

  The old man looked up at Algan.

  “Who are you,” he asked in his cracked voice, “that you should have in your possession the chessboard o£ the Masters? During the course of my long life, I’ve seen it just three times. Once, it was tike one you have, or one exactly like it, and the other two times I saw it etched on the black walls of those damnable citadels. Who are you? Are you one of their men? Have you come to take my soul, as you did from all the other poor spacemen you buried alive?”

  “I’m just looking for a weapon to destroy Betelgeuse,” said Algan simply. “I’m counting on you.”

  STARMASTERS’

  GAMBIT

  Gerard Klein

  Translated by C. J. RICHARDS

  Copyright ©, 1973, by DAW Books, Inc.

  Original edition entitled Le Gambit des Étoiles; copyright © 1958 by Librairie Hachette; © 1971 by Gérard Klein for Bibliotheque Marabout.

  Published by arrangement with the author.

  Translation by C. J. Richards.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Attila Hejja

  To JACQUES BERGIER

  FIRST PRINTING, AUGUST 1973

  3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  PRINTED IN U.S.A

  Contents: -

  CHAPTER I - The Recruiters

  CHAPTER II - The Stellar Part

  CHAPTER III - Along the Paths of the Void

  CHAPTER IV - The Puritan Planets

  CHAPTER V - All the Stars in the Sky

  CHAPTER VI - Accursed Worlds

  CHAPTER VII - On the Other Side of the Galaxy

  CHAPTER VIII - Beyond Dead Suns

  CHAPTER IX - Betelgeuse

  CHAPTER X - Through the Crystal Wall

  CHAPTER XI - The Chessboard of the Stars

  CHAPTER I

  The Recruiters

  He was thirty-two years old and his name was Jerg Al-gan. Most of his life had been spent on the Earth, where he’d roamed over the planet. He had glided across the seas on rickety hydrofoils, flown over whole continents in obsolete planes left over from the last century; he had sunbathed on the beaches of Australia; he had hunted the last lions in Africa before the desert plateau bad tumbled into the ocean.

  His achievements had been negligible. He had never left the Earth. He had traveled through the stratosphere. Between trips he lived in Dark, supporting himself doing odd jobs as it was possible to do in large cities.

  Dark was, in fact, the sole remaining city on the Earth. It had a population of thirty million and was the last resort in all of the Galaxy for men of his sort. So long as they went quietly about their business, the Psychological Police left them alone. By virtue of its situation and antiquity, Dark, despite its small size, had become one of the most important ports of that section of the Galaxy. Here, trafficking in all sorts of commodities was unrestricted. All the known species, and some unknown as well, could be - bought; even forbidden imports, presumed to be dangerous, could be procured. All the drugs concocted for humans, as well as for other breeds, were obtainable in Dark. It was rumored that even slaves were available. Dark was the never-ending scandal of the Galaxy.

  ’ Algan had had his ups and downs. He couldn’t remember ever working more than three months at the same job, nor having sold the same commodity twice. He had never had any run-in with the Psychological Police, but that hadn’t been entirely his doing.

  He was now looking for something else to do: a chance to explore a corner of the Earth as yet unknown to him. There were still a few unexpected opportunities to be found in the section of the old stellar port which handled only the traffic for the near planets: perhaps he’d run into an old crank on his first visit to the Old Planet who wanted to visit ancient ruins; or get his clutches into an obsessive hunter consumed with the ambition of adding a Terrestrial rabbit to his trophies; or, best of all, find some lost member of a scientific expedition who, between a couple of drinks, would pay to find out what he knew about the customs of the inhabitants of the Earth.

  Algan went into Orion’s Sword, a tavern whose very name caused, quite unfairly, a shudder to run through the high-minded. He sat in the darkest corner and ordered a drink. He slouched at his ease, never taking his eyes off the door. Orion’s Sword, which gave the place its name, swung over the entrance. It was a long shiny stem of steel, sharp as a needle, antenna-like, decorated with curious sparkling moldings. Had it really served as a weapon, millions of years ago, in another world? No one knew. It could have been just an artifact.

  The bar was still almost deserted and surprisingly silent. Even the zotl presses seemed muffled.

  Algan clinked some silver on the table.

  “One zotl,” he said.

  The sight of the heavy pistons crushing the hard root as it slowly lost its color, while the juice foamed out, gave him almost as much pleasure as drinking the amber liquid. Zotl root was one of the few legal sources of drugs in certain sections of the Galaxy. Its effect varied with the individual. Sometimes it produced sensations of power. Its effect was comparable to cenesthetic frenzy, the nervous mental state which is the result of the crossing of nerve ends that makes sounds visible and colors audible.

  Algan slowly drained his glass. Every time he drank zotl he had the same vision: a gray desert under a low green sky spangled with the iridescent outlines of moving rocks, which regrouped themselves to the rhythm of the ages. Distant, invisible suns played strident music. It was a peaceful spectacle, outside of time.

  When he opened his eyes again the bar was half-full. There were men from every corner of the universe: merchants from Rigel wearing their metal shirts; tremendously tall, thin navigators from Ultar moved clumsily, hampered by Terrestrial gravity; small Xiens with blond hair and speckled eyes; bald men from Aro with pupil-less eyes deep as wells, under bulging foreheads, their complexions livid, almost greenish.

  Dress and colors varied: some were bright, some gaudy, some dull. Weapons had a nightmarish quality about them. Orion’s Sword proffered a small cross section of the sort of carnival that undulated through Dark when a fleet of merchant ships sailed into the stellar port.

  Accents ran the gamut from guttural to musical, but everyone there spoke the old space language, a bastard mixture of all the languages of the Earth.

  Someone sat down next to Jerg: a sturdy Earthling with a deep tan and a paunch filled with the good food available in this Galaxy.

  “Would you like to do some traveling, Mack?” the man asked, looking at Algan.

  “It all depends where,” replied Algan, guardedly.

  “Take your pick; you can go where you like. A zotl?”

  “I’ll take the zotl anyway,” said Algan.

  They drank and remained silent for a bit.

  “There are many beautiful worlds in space,” said the fat Earthling dreamily.

  “Are there?”

  “Young man, when I was your age I had already been to about fifty planets. But maybe you have too…? You’re between expeditions, aren’t you? Space isn’t an adventure anymore, is it? Another zotl?”

  “I’ve never left the Earth,” Algan said slowly, “and I don’t want to. There’s nothing like this green Earth; you can have all those worlds whirling about in space… Thank you for the zotl. But it takes more than a zotl to put out the sun, as the saying goes. Isn’t that right?”

  “Sure.”

  They were silent for a moment. Algan scanned the small weasel eyes deep-set in fleshy slits. There was a gleam in them that he did not li
ke.

  “I suppose you’re a trader.”

  The Earthling gave a coarse laugh.

  “You can call it that, young man. I’m a sort of trader. Business is a bit tight on Earth at this moment, isn’t it?”

  Politeness was absolutely essential in space and in ports. Jerg Algan understood the value of caution, so he had cultivated exquisite manners, and the better part of good manners consisted in the art of never baldly asking questions.

  “Yes, rather. Goods are getting scarce.”

  The fat businessman again laughed coarsely. Jerg chose to join in. That made the fat Earthling laugh even more. His eyes kept disappearing behind fleshy folds of fat. Algan suddenly stopped laughing.

  “Are you looking for something on Earth? I know it like my pocket. Perhaps I can help.”

  “Perhaps you can. A zotl, my boy?”

  Algan disliked the familiarity of the fat man’s tone, but the zotl excused it. Looking inwardly at his dream, soaring over a gray desert, he could hear his companion’s clucking noises crashing down like a sudden darkness, smothering the song of aerial suns.

  “Sure, you can help me, my boy. Just sign this and you’ll see new places.”

  ‘Where are you going?” asked Algan thickly.

  ‘Where duty calls,” came from the depths of a fold of fat. He felt something damp on his fingertips, then was aware that they were being crushed on a hard surface.

  “Is he ever plastered!” said a strange voice. He opened his eyes. Someone placed between his fingers a cylinder made of something soft. He didn’t know what it was. He was flying between pearly cliffs under a low green sky.

  “Write your name, chum,” said an affectionate voice which he could see being written in the clouds in a flowery script. “You want to travel, you’re dying to travel. Write your name.”

  Large luminous stones were writhing to the rhythm of unstable millennia, like tentacles trying to put out the light of the whole universe.

  “Sign, chum; one more try.”

  He tried to pull himself together, to make his fingers hold the little cylinder. He began to write, but it was difficult because his half-shut eyes could perceive the colors only as sounds.

  “One more try.”

  He stuck out his tongue and began to drool. Someone took hold of his arm and said:

  “OK.”

  Algan dropped his hand; it was so heavy he thought his arm was going to come off. He felt himself falling between endless pearly cliffs, dragged down by the leaden weight of his right hand. Then he fell forward. His fingers drummed on the hard surface of the table. His eyes, riveted on the iridescent glass, perceived an increasingly intense and strident sound. He was plunging into a pearly well, down, down into green water under a green sky; it was like a pearly cylinder with a green floor and a green ceiling which were coming closer and closer. The pearly wall was now only a narrow strip between those green areas, nothing more than a thread. Then the well exploded.

  He sat up suddenly, lights still flickering in his eyes. He instinctively touched his armpit with his right hand; then he snorted like someone coming out of the water.

  There was no one next to him. The fat Earthling with the sausage-like fingers could well have been a dream.

  He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

  “A drink.”

  He emptied the glass in one gulp and felt better. He got up and tried to walk. His legs felt as though he’d been lying down for centuries. He had drunk too much zotl. He felt around in his pockets and left a handful of coins on the table, then he went toward the door. Someone greeted him as he went by and he responded with a weary gesture. He was stumbling and as he was about to fall steadied himself by clutching the doorknob.

  The thick damp air of Dark engulfed him as he went out. He blinked several times.

  Painfully, he walked along the badly lit street. His feet slithered along pavements worn down by thousands of boots, but his well-trained eyes unconsciously searched the dark corners. Dark was a safe city but only up to a point, and it was better never to find out what that exact point was.

  He had no place to go. He thought of spending the night in some section of the old town, a place where one could lean one’s back against a corner and doze, hand on pistol butt.

  The lights of the Old Stellar Port guided him. He wove in and out of doorways, followed dark passages between houses that were older than the port itself, avoided openings that were too well-lit. He occasionally stumbled and made use of the brief lights from outgoing ships to pick his way along.

  A sudden noise made him prick up his ears.

  “Now,” a voice shouted.

  Several men jumped him. He had not seen them approaching and tried to fight his way out of the fog clouding his mind. Just as they were about to grab him he slipped to the ground, then ran between their legs. It worked. He started to run, trying to see who had attacked him.

  His boots echoed on the pavement. He couldn’t hope to shake off his pursuers. An open doorway in this section of town would be almost as dangerous as the street. His only real chance was to come upon a patrol of the Psychological Police. But the police seldom ventured out at night in the Old Stellar Port, not because they were concerned with their own safety but because there was actually no need for them. The inhabitants of the old town did not ask for the protection of the Psychological Police and the Psycho left them pretty well alone. This was the result of an ancient tacit understanding which gave the people of the ten puritan planets a chance to criticize the vices of the Old Planet.

  Algan’s right hand went up to his armpit and he caressed the sheath of his radiant. Murder was a serious matter, not to be committed except under extreme provocation. Explanations to the Psycho about legitimate self-defense would fall on deaf ears.

  He looked over his shoulder and saw that his attackers were very close. They ran almost noiselessly. He could see four shadows. Perhaps others followed. In any event, the struggle was over even before it had begun unless he used his weapon.

  Swerving suddenly, he turned into an adjoining alley which led to the Stellar Port by an enormously wide staircase. But he knew he would never reach the bronze doors. He heard his pursuers laugh. Goaded, he went faster. For one second he thought he’d shaken them on the winding stone staircase, but there was no place to go. He could only leap from step to step, fleeing between those blind walls, under a thin ribbon of sky and stars, trying to figure out who they were, why they wanted him, and where they were now.

  He was rapidly getting winded. His right hand touched the radiant in its sheath. Perhaps he ought to stop and fight. Or was he nearer the port than he thought? They didn’t give him time to choose. They shot first. They didn’t want to kill him, but a large sticky ball hit him in the nape of the neck while steely strips furled themselves around his legs. He fell forward, his hands groping for the ground. He tried to roll up in a ball, bouncing from step to step along the walls and at the same time reaching for his radiant. But the blow on his neck was paralyzing him and more strips fettered his arms. He managed to pull out his radiant and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. He squeezed the butt against the palm of his hand, but there was no shot. As he sank into darkness he felt the butt of his weapon. It had no loading clip.

  He flung the weapon away and it bounced from step to step. Then hands ran over him.

  “That’s him.”

  “OK. Go to it.”

  A cupping glass was put against his right ear. The thin ribbon of sky and stars began to revolve and turn green while the dark walls became lighter and lighter, taking on a pearly gray hue.

  “Good night,” he mumbled and fell asleep.

  He was drifting on a pearl-gray cloud and wondered what he was doing there. He woke up, and at once felt for his pistol; it was gone. Then he realized that he was lying naked on a cot in a windowless, white-walled room.

  He pushed himself up on an elbow. He had to sort this out. Algan dimly remembered having been in a fight t
he night before. Perhaps the Psychological Police had picked him up. He did not like the idea. Unless he had been wounded and been brought to the port hospital for treatment. Yet he was feeling in splendid form.

  As he thought the situation over, he realized that the room looked exactly like the ones in the Stellar Port which he had occasionally visited. There was nothing intrinsically worrisome about it except that it seemed to have no aperture: no door, no window, no trapdoor. He was not unduly concerned; since he had got in, he would certainly find a way out. On the other hand, the theft of his clothes was decidedly irritating. But was it really a theft?

  He tried to recall the last thing that had happened to him. As he unconsciously rubbed his head behind his right ear he suddenly remembered that he had been given the bell treatment. That in itself was more worrisome than the loss of his clothes. As far as he knew only the police used those instruments and they were so well-guarded that an ordinary gang of thieves would not have access to them. He undoubtedly was in the hands of the Psycho.

  Algan was reassured with the thought that if they had wanted to kill him they could have done so much more easily when he was unconscious.

  He lay back on the cot and waited. He needed more information to plan either defense or escape. And if the Psycho was out to get him, they had at least five charges against him; he did not even have to open his mouth.

  The wall facing him lighted up and became transparent. He could see the Stellar Port now. In the back, among the high prows pointing skyward, at the very end of the huge cement plain, gleamed the great bronze doors which separated order and space from the chaos of the city.