Book 3 - Star's End Read Online Free PDF Page B

not stupid after all.” Left
unthought was Chub’s hope for the same reaction from his own
Old Ones.
    By way of support benRabi replied, “This is a new era,
Chub. It’s going to take hastiness and danciness to
survive.”
    “Sharks coming again.”
    Once more
Danion’s
weaponry scarred the long
night. Moyshe wondered what some alien would think if he happened
on its unconcealable mark, a thousand years from now, a thousand
light-years away.
    Both sides had used retrospective observation techniques during
the Ulantonid War. A battle’s outcome might be fixed, but it
could be studied over and over from every possible angle.
    The second assault was more furious than the first. BenRabi
stopped trying to think. He had to give his whole attention over to
following the situation.
    More sharks dropped hyper, drawn by no known means. The rage
took them, too. They attacked everything, including wounded
brethren floundering around the battle region.
    This was the root of Chub’s fear. That more and more
sharks would be drawn till they simply overwhelmed everything.
    It was the future foreseen by both starfish and Starfishers.
The terror that herd after herd and harvestship after harvestship
would be consumed was the force that had driven the maverick
commander of this fleet to hazard the defenses of Stars’
End.
    The arrivals slowed to a trickle. Chub thought, “We going
to win again, Moyshe man-friend. See the pattern? The glorious
pattern. They waste their might devouring their own
injured.”
    BenRabi searched his kaleidoscopic mind-link universe. He saw
nothing but chaos. This, he reflected, is the sort of thing
Czyzewski was thinking about when he wrote
The Old God.
So
much of Czyzewski’s poetry seemed reflective of recent
events. Had the man been prescient?
    No. He was far gone on stardust when he did the cycle including
The Old God.
The drug killed him less than a month after
he finished the poem. The images were just the flaming madness of
the drug burning through.
    “Don’t you get tired of being right?” he asked
when the first sharks fled.
    “Never, Moyshe man-friend. But learned long ago to wait
till event is certain, predestined, to make observation. Error is
painful. The scorn of Old Ones is like the fire of a thousand
stars.”
    “I know the feeling.” For some reason the face of
Admiral Beckhart, his one-time commander, drifted through his
universe. Here on the galactic rim, fighting for his life against
creatures he had not suspected existed two years earlier, his
previous career seemed as remote as that of another man. Of another
incarnation, or something he had read about.
    The assault collapsed once the first few well-fed sharks
fled.
    The starfish had suffered far less than their inedible
guardians. Not one dragon was missing from the golden herd defended
by the harvestships. But another ship had been injured
severely.
    A traitorous thought stole across Moyshe’s mind on
mouse-soft feet.
    Chub was less indignant than he expected.
    On a strictly pragmatic level, the starfish agreed that getting
out of the interstellar rivers would be the best way to conserve
Starfisher ships and lives.
    “They’ll never go, Chub. The harvestfleets are their
nations. Their homelands. They’re proud, stubborn people.
They’ll keep fighting and hoping.”
    “I know, Moyshe man-friend. It saddens the herd. And makes
the Old Ones proud that they forged their alliance so well. But why
do you say ‘they?’ ”
    “We, then. Part of the
time . . . 
Most
of the time I’m
an outsider here. They do things differently than what I
learned . . . ”
    “Sometimes you miss your old life, Moyshe
man-friend.”
    “Sometimes. Not often, and not much, though. I’d
better tend to business.” He had to focus his attention to
force his physical voice to croak, “Gun Control, Mindlink.
The sharks are going. They’ve given up. You can secure when
the last leaves firing range.”
    “You sure, Linker? Don’t look