The Wonderful Day by E. C. Tubb

Author:E. C. Tubb
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: science fiction adventure, science fiction stories, space opera
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2012-01-25T16:00:00+00:00

KALGAN THE GOLDEN

From the spaceport the Street of Starmen ran a twisted mile to the great plaza of Ghort. A strange mile this, where the old met the new and the muted drone of a thousand tongues blended with the throb of starships as they settled down on their wings of flame. Small booths jostled the glittering mobiles of the Star Traders, taverns and houses of delight with samples of their wares suspended in gilded cages as they simpered at the men below. Sloe-eyed maidens from the torrid worlds of Phenris and ice-eyed women from the bleak planets of Eddoria. Black hair and blonde, green hair and orange, red hair and mottled blue, caressing smooth shoulders and revealing delectable limbs.

They matched the men thronging the street, the tall, cold-eyed men of space and the furtive pedlars of unnamed delights. Their calls mingled with the drone from the taverns and the shrill, complaining whine of the beggars as they held out their claw-like hands and showed their oozing radiation scars. From the shops came the persuasive tones of black-haired, swarthy-skinned traders, offering the sleek beauty of a proton blaster of the chill perfection of a finely-hammered blade.

In the taverns dull-eyed men sipped at their goblets filled with drink as black as night and as bitter as lost ambition, scowling at the roars of mirth from those who gulped the ruby wine of Keldoris or the poisonous green brews of Calgai. Heat there was, and dust, and the murmur of winged and crawling things. The sounds of shuffling feet, and the steely click of sword scabbard against blaster butt, the jingle of spurs from the desert tribes and the thin, wailing song of the slavers. All shifting and eddying along the Street of Starmen beneath the blazing, blue-white inferno of the sun that was Deneb.

This was Ghort at auction time.

A man strode down the street from the spaceport. A tall man, slender as a tempered blade and with a litheness of motion that betrayed hidden strength. All of bronze he was, from the soles of his polished knee-boots to the crown of the helmet hugging his bleak, deeply tanned features. A short cloak swirled from his shoulders, half hiding the skeel blade at his left hip and the blaster at his right. Straight he walked, his eyes never flickering, and he walked as though he walked alone.

A beggar saw him, a stooped and ravaged old man, his face scarred with the blue sears of radiation blasts and his scalp a raw egg. Ragged he was, grimed with dirt no water could remove, and his voice shrilled with the beggars’ whine.

“Charity, my lords. Charity to an old man. Bread for my lips and medicine for my wounds. Charity!”

The tall figure strode onwards, like a thing of metal, a thing of stone and, seeing him, the beggar thrust forward the bowl in his hand.

“Charity, my lord! Of your generosity, remember me.”

“Remember you?” The man halted, his eyes as cold and hard as ice and iron as he stared at the wreck of what had once been a man.

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