Secret of the Stars Read Online Free PDF Page B

edging into the Kamador mountains; he had not been particularly fortunate. He tried to learn something about that other bidder, but discovered only that he was a trapper and that his bid was probably only another move in the old struggle between the companies and the handful of men who had pioneered Fenris on their own.
    Early the next morning, the emigrants were loaded into the cargo hold of a crawler bound for the mines. Aircraft was not practical on the wolf world. Freakish storms had brought about too many crashes during the early days of settlement. Now transportation followed the archaic modes of travel, the roads themselves patrolled constantly against washout and storm damage. And against something or someone else, Joktar surmised, when he assessed the number and quality of the weapons carried by an unnecessarily large number of guards riding the crawler.
    None of the emigrants were the type to rebel in order to break-out into the highly inhospitable wilderness they had already been indoctrinated to fear. So why the guards? And blasters and needlers were no protection against storms.
    The heavy vehicle ground away from the port, but the emigrants in its windowless middle section had no view of the countryside. Fifteen men, drifters from the streets, happy-smokers already sunk in the gloom of a cut-off addict, a couple of bruisers who might have been the personal guards of some vip, shared those cramped quarters. The bruisers Joktar studied until he decided that they were not the stuff from which rebels were made. They might instead, if they survived the initial months of breaking in, serve as guards over their fellows.
    As the men in the crawler began to shake down into a gang, he held aloof. Already the muscle men were asserting themselves. Joktar did not fear having to face either of them alone in rough and tumble, he knew too many tricks of infighting. But the two of them together would be a different matter.
    The long day ended when the crawler sheltered for the night at a way station and the men were hustled from its warm interior, through a chill which bit like acid, into a dome. It was then that Joktar learned something new about himself. That cold which ate at his fellows, even subdued the bruisers, did not strike at him with the same intensity. His thermo suit was no better than theirs, and he had none of the outer furs of the guards. But to him that change of air was more exhilarating than numbing.
    He thought about that as he swallowed the canned stew, remembering one or two other odd happenings out of the past. Those summer days in N’Yok when Kern had rallied him on always appearing cool, he had not been able to understand why others of the SunSpot staff swore at the heat every time they were forced to venture out of the air-conditioned building. And another time, further back when the cook, crazy mad from drinking sar-juice, had locked him, then only a small boy, into the freeze room. The dark cavern of the freeze room had scared him some but not the cold. When Mei-Mei, Kern’s current favorite, had found him, she’d been scared, too, but because he had walked out under his own power. At the time he hadn’t understood clearly what had excited her so much; now he began to. Suppose he could stand extremes of both hot and cold better than most men?
    If that were true, it became a point on which to build an escape plan. He was so intent upon his thoughts that he momentarily forgot his surroundings. Then a foot struck against the knee of one of his outstretched legs.
    “You there, bones, pay attention when a man talks.”
    Joktar glanced up. This would have come sooner or later, he had been resigned to such trouble ever since he had sighted the muscle men in their group. They were making the old, familiar play of the streets. Since he was, to outward appearances, fair game, someone they could belt around as an object lesson, they were going to put on a show. But neither was armed and it looked as if he