The Game of Stars and Comets by Andre Norton

Author:Andre Norton [Norton, Andre]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 1-4165-9155-9
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2009-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

Diskan slept soundly as the shadows separated and went to accomplish purposes of their own in the streets of Xcothal.

Chapter 9

The black and white birds wheeled and circled outside the arched openings. Diskan watched them apathetically. He had not moved from the place that night and fatigue had chosen for his rest, though the sun was bright and the day sky cleared of all clouds. He felt emptied, without any wish to move, to think, to be—

But now life sparked within him. Dragging himself to his feet, Diskan walked slowly back to the stair that had brought him to this perch above the city. Wearily, he circled down, around and around that spiral, slowly, as the descent made him dizzy. There was a great silence within the walls of the building. Was it a temple, a fortress, a palace? One of three—or all—he would never be sure.

Diskan came out in the lower hall. Now much plainer to read were the tracks he had followed the night before. For want of any other employment, he began to trace again those others' passing.

Shoulder high on one wall—a blackened streak. No stunner left that! Blaster raying, though he was not too familiar with the traces of those lethal weapons. And just beyond that scar a door stood open. Diskan drew his stunner. Against a blaster that was hardly better than the club-spear, but it was the best he had.

The room beyond startled him. In this building he had seen no signs of ruin and decay, but now he fronted walls that were holed, riven in great gaps, with a crumble of debris out on the floor of the chamber. And each of those holes gave upon blackness, as if there were great open space beyond.

Fire marks—sears of blast. This chaos, Diskan realized, was not the result of time, but the work of man, energetically tearing into fabric of the building—searching for what? He began a cautious circuit of the chamber, detouring about the rubble, longing for a lamp with which to explore the darkness beyond.

A chattering. Diskan swung the stunner, thumbed the button, and saw a mass collapse limply. He turned over with the toe of his boot the body of one of the scavengers such as he had seen at the burned ground.

He stopped near some claw-marked stone, from under which came a dark oozing, now dried. Diskan dropped his supply bag to examine the fall of stone more carefully. Gingerly, he began to lever the top of the mass apart, then leaped away as it cascaded from him into the gap of the broken wall.

Sound reached him from the shaking mound, a clicking. Diskan readied the stunner, watching for another of the scavengers, but the limited light revealed instead a head, shoulders, an outflung arm. The man was dead, had been so for some time. What Diskan could see of his clothing suggested a spacer uniform, and there was the glint of an officer's insignia on his upstanding collar.

On the wrist of the outflung arm was a wide bracelet inset with a dial.

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