Two mornings later he met the spaceship with time to spare.
At his usual spot outside the spaceport gate he got everything set up, arranging his merchandise in attractive assortment-packs, bribing his friends the gate guards with a few of his choicer fruits, and erecting his sign.
While he was out foraging, his sign rode face down in the wagon bed. Now he got it out and started to prop it up when the words on it caught his attention. He blinked as he read them for the very first time:
EKZOTIK WILDFRUT
Frash frum Merga Wildenes
Exsitin Tasti Trete
Miksed Asortment Pack
Onli 25 Minals
Garanteed Wont Make Yu Sik
It took him a moment to get over the enchanting discovery that he could read. Then annoyance came. He had paid a drunken crumbum 40 minals to paint the sign, and it was a mess of errors!
He knew how to paint a sign for himself now, but still, he had to admit, this sign sold wildfruit. A Mead-memory suggested that it was appropriate for a ragamuffin peddler, that it drew attention, amusement, and sympathy.
Cargy frowned impatiently. He could think up his own reasons for keeping this sign, without help from the Mead-memories. For instance, the gate guards and other people he knew in town thought the sign was made for him by a ne'er-do-well father, and he didn't want anybody getting the idea that his parent was imaginary. So he would keep the sign . . . and keep those Mead-memories in their place and not let them start running his life.
"Comin' down," a guard announced boredly.
Cargy tilted his head to look for the descending ship. He found it when a gleam of sunlight caught a polished surface. It was a speck in the sky that seemed to move only slightly as the minutes passed.
"Where's this one from?" he asked.
"Vega Nine."
"That's close to Earth," Cargy said, since that was an appropriate remark to come from him. He now knew that Vega Nine was not close to Earth at all. It was merely twice as close as Merga. Cargy watched the incoming ship with an awe he hadn't felt before, because he was beginning to grasp the meaning of interstellar distances.
The spaceship was now swelling visibly. Cargy thought about the giant closrem drivers, in the forward third of that quarter-mile-long cylinder, that were spinning and roaring loudly enough to shatter eardrums—or even skulls—except that they were behind yards-thick layers of refrigerated sound insulation.
So well was that mighty noise muffled that the ship floated down without sound that Cargy could hear. But there was a grinding screech as its big tripod touched down on the plasticrete apron, and rock and metal gave under the strain of the ship's tremendous weight.
If he could only figure out some way to be aboard that ship when it lifted off again!
That was something he had never wanted before. Merga was his world, and he liked it. But at this very moment, and for as long as he remained on Merga, he was going to be agitated by a powerful temptation to do something very foolish.
That was to follow Mead's final wish and go tell the Xenologists about the psychivores.
Mead oughtn't to have put that in with his memories, he thought plaintively. The old man had been isolated for years! He didn't know what was going on. He had hardly been aware of the war that Cargy and thousands of other children had suffered through with varying degrees of anguish that had left them indelibly marked. So Mead didn't know Merga was full of kids who were mental cases! Cargy knew, because he had been in the Refugee Rescue Home with several hundred, and he still encountered no few of them in the streets and alleys of Port City.
Some of them were belligerent (but soon learned not to start anything with him!) but most of them were just cracked. They didn't know what was real and what wasn't, and Cargy had listened to a lot of fantastic stuff from these kids, told in perfect seriousness. Most of the time he pretended to believe what they said because it made them feel better.
Anyway, these kids provided a well-defined and well-populated category into which the Xenologists would plop him if he came in with a wild tale about a psychivore. And when the Xenologists learned there were no parents or guardians to come take him off their hands . . . well, Cargy could guess what would happen then. Well-meaning adults would take charge of his life for him.
That was why the temptation had to be resisted. But resisting was hard, because he had to fight more than Mead's final wish. He was bucking his early training as well.
Humanity on an alien planet had to stay alert to dangers posed by local lifeforms. Nobody on Merga was allowed to forget the absolute necessity of reporting anything unusual observed in the behavior of the local flora and fauna. And Cargy, a farmer's son, had as his earliest memories the reports he made to his father after he had been out playing in the fields of cultivated Earthplants. He knew beyond question that it was wrong to withhold information on the activities of local lifeforms.
And the psychivores were creatures nobody else knew existed, and the fate of Mead, and that man he had evil-eyed, proved the psychivores to be the gravest peril man had found on any planet yet!
Why, if one came into Port City right now, Cargy thought with a shiver, in no time at all everybody in town could be evil-eyeing like Mead or gone crazy like that other guy!
He had to stop thinking about it!
Then the passengers from the spaceship began coming through the gate and they amply occupied his attention. Now he knew why so many of them laughed when they read his sign, and he noticed that most of the laughers stopped to buy. Sales went briskly for a while.
The last to pass through the gate were eight of the handsomest, most flamboyantly garbed people Cargy had ever seen. They passed his stand without buying.
"Who was that bunch?" he asked a guard.
"Some people bringin' in a show."
"A show?"
"Yeah. Live entertainment. You know what that is, Cargy?"
"I guess so. It's stuff like on TV tape, except real people do it right where you're at."
The guard chuckled. "You got it. Them folks're goin' to do a show at Civic Hall the next four days."
Cargy gazed speculatively at the show people as they loaded into ground-taxis and sped away. "I guess they'll go on to another planet right after that," he remarked.
"Yeah," said the guard.
Cargy began packing his stuff. He handed the guard two packs of his unsold fruit. "Here's for you and Bill," he said.
"You got a lot left over this time, ain't you?" the guard sympathized. "Let us pay you."
"Naw. You guys're friends, and I got money left from last time yet." Cargy said his goodbyes and moved away, drawing his wagon around the spaceport perimeter and into the Old Town section of the city.
A half hour brought him to Mrs. Tragg's Room and Board, an old brick dwelling showing numerous indications of decay. He pulled his wagon around back and rapped on the kitchen door.
Mrs. Tragg appeared, wiping a wisp of stringy gray hair out of her big dried-pudding face. "I expected you day before yesterday, boy," she snapped accusatively. "Where was you?"
"I got slowed down," Cargy replied meekly.
"Somethin' wrong with your stumblebum daddy?" she prodded.
Cargy lowered his eyes and didn't speak.
"Well," she huffed, "you gotta use that room regular if you expect to keep it. It's costin' me, keepin' a place for you that you don't use more'n two nights in a week! And on top of that, here you come strayin' to my door two days late! You can't do that and expect anything from me!"
"No'm," agreed Cargy. He had expected this scene, but found that it didn't shake him up as it had when it happened before. His Mead-memories let him understand that Mrs. Tragg was trying to ease her own insecurity by making him feel insecure.
"Well, lucky for you, nobody got your room this time," she finally admitted. "Here's your key. I reckon you want me to take your leftover fruit on your rent like always?"
"Yes'm, and I'll pay you for four days this time. I'm going to stay that long and look for a town job."
"Has somethin' happened to your daddy?" she demanded.
"No ma'am. He just said I might make more money in town, now that I'm getting some size on me."
"Fine daddy!" she growled.
After settling with Mrs. Tragg, Cargy pulled his wagon into the dim little basement room that was his in-town home. With the door locked behind him, he sat on the edge of his cot and pulled Mead's wallet from inside his jacket.
He had looked at the money in it before, and his Mead-memories had confirmed what his eyes had seen. But he wanted to count it a bill at a time.
He fingered lovingly through the sheaf of currency. Yes, four of them really were hundred-kon bills. Also, there were nine twenties, and a ten, and two ones. Combined with his own earnings, this gave him a total of K602.85!
But . . . tremendous as this sure would have seemed a week earlier, he knew this was a pitiably small amount of wealth compared to his need. A single fare to Princon IV—Merga's nearest populated neighbor—was over K400. He was, he decided bleakly, far from rich enough to be an interstellar traveler. Even if spaceships took unaccompanied, undocumented kids aboard, which they didn't.
So what he really needed instead of a lot more cash was an adult ally to take him away from Merga. This thought brought him back to the troupe of show people who had just arrived, and would be moving on in a very few days. His Mead-memories defined show people as a wild, unpredictable breed. Which meant that someone in the troupe might be just the adult he needed.
When he showed up backstage at Civic Hall, Cargy looked like a snappy city lad. He had spent money as never before, on a haircut and new clothes, and considered it a wise investment. He hunted down the troupe's manager, a man named Petron.
"What do you want, kid?" Petron asked brusquely.
"My name is Tommy Larkan," said Cargy, "and I want to know if your bunch needs an errand boy. If you do, I know where the best coffee in town is, and the best and cheapest sandwiches, and a lot of things like that."
"Yeah?" Petron stared speculatively at him. "I suppose you're too young to know where the action is, though. If there is any action in this burg!"
"I know where there's a card game, and where the women hang around."
"Don't try to string me, kid," Petron growled.
"No stringin'," Cargy vowed.
"Well . . . you're on. Two kons a day, and any tips you can get."
That started Cargy on four fascinating and exciting days that built to a big disappointment. He had no trouble making friends with all the players, but these experienced troupers knew the hazards of emotional entanglements with locals. They were willing enough to like Cargy, but not one was about to love him . . . certainly not to the extent of going along with any kind of adoption scheme.
The defeat was upsetting. For years Cargy had worked hard to keep his freedom, and now when he was perfectly willing to place himself in the hands of an adult, nobody who would do seemed to want him!
Also, he had been misguided by his Mead-memories in expecting a different reaction from the show people. He had presumed that his little-boy charm, plus his adult understanding of how to use it, was an unbeatable combination. But old Mead hadn't really known show people; he only knew their reputation. He hadn't suspected they kept their emotions so well-guarded.
The days passed, the final performance was given, and the troupe began packing. Cargy moped about backstage, feeling depressed, but nobody seemed to need his help at the moment. He climbed onto a high stack of dusty scenery and lay down to brood.
In a few minutes he heard one of the women passing below him call out: "Pete, have you seen Tommy, the errand kid?"
"Not for a while," Petron replied. "Maybe he went home after I paid him off."
"Oh. I wanted to slip him a five. He's such a sweet little guy."
"Keep your money," Petron advised sourly. "We're not taking enough kons out of here to upset Merga's balance-of-payments as it is."
Cargy thought of climbing down to receive the five, but decided it would be best to wait a few minutes.
"Something else, Pete," he heard the woman say. "I simply must work on my costumes during the flight to Princon. Can't I have my trunk in my stateroom?"
"Afraid not, Vonica. It's regulations. All company trunks have to go in the baggage compartment. But I'll arrange to have yours stored up front where you can get to it."
"That's good enough. Thanks, Pete."
The voices moved away, and after some cogitation Cargy grinned. Vonica's costume trunk was pretty big—with room enough to hold her stuff plus a boy, an oxygen flask, and a couple of sandwiches. And on board the ship, when she opened the trunk and found him . . . well, Vonica did seem to like him more than the others, and could be talked into keeping quiet, he figured.
Once aboard the ship and footloose, he thought he could manage okay. Old Mead knew spaceships well.
In any event, he had to do something to get off this planet, because that temptation wasn't easing off the least bit. Vonica's trunk offered the best opportunity open to him.
He was a reasonably comfortable stowaway. He had been bounced around only a little when the trunk was loaded on a van at the Civic Hall stage entrance, and again when it was lifted into the Princon-bound spaceship.
The sounds of loading died out, and after a tiresome wait of perhaps two hours Cargy heard the soft hum of the closrem drivers beginning to turn. The liftoff was so smooth that he didn't know exactly when it came. It made him feel good to know he was on his way.
There was the sound of someone moving about among the luggage, making a tally of some sort, judging by the rustle of papers. Cargy dozed.
The sudden bark of a loudspeaker snapped him alert:
"Orbital hold! Orbital hold! Notice to passengers and crew . . . We are holding in orbit around Merga for an unauthorized person check. Please remain where you are unless requested otherwise by a ship's officer."
"What the hell?" grunted the tally-taker. Cargy was wondering the same thing. There was no procedure he (or Mead) knew of that would have revealed his presence on board.
The loudspeaker clicked twice and spoke again: "Passenger Luggage, Deck C! Respond, please!"
The tally-taker replied: "Luggage, Deck C, Mathurt here."
"Who's there with you, Mathurt?"
"Nobody, sir."
"Very well. Carry on, Mathurt."
If Mathurt continued his work, he did so in complete silence. A minute passed.
Then a door clanged open and the compartment was filled with loud voices. "Stand back, Mathurt, there's a stowaway in here! Getting a reading, Mike?"
"Yes, sir. This trunk in front." The lid over Cargy's head rattled briefly. "It's locked, sir. The tag on it reads 'Property of Petron Productions,' and 'Vonica' is painted on the lid."
"Get Sarl Petron down here. And this Vonica, too. You in the trunk!"
Cargy knew the jig was up. "Yes, sir," he replied.
"A damn' kid!" the commanding voice grated. "What are you doing in there?"
That, Cargy thought, was a silly question. "Hitching a ride to Princon," he said.
"You got enough air?"
"Yes, sir."
"Relax, men. We can wait for Petron to come unlock it."
Cargy called out, "Mister Officer?"
"Yeah?"
"How'd you know I was here?"
"Our life-detection scanner showed one point too many," the man growled. "What did you think? Or didn't you know about scanners? We've had them for forty years!"
Cargy hadn't known. Mead knew of life-detectors used in hospitals and such places, but the old man had been out of touch for too long. Cargy sighed. "Well, why didn't you detect me before we took off?" he asked.
"We can't scan in the middle of a city. The population overloads the detectors."
"Oh." Cargy's self-confidence was shaken. This was the second time the combination of his youthful vitality and Mead's mature but dated knowledge had let him down.
He heard Petron's voice raised in protest and a peevish "What's this all about?" from Vonica. The lock of the trunk clicked and the lid was raised. Big arms plunged into Vonica's costumes and hauled Cargy out. He stood blinking in the light.
"I never saw the kid before!" Petron announced flatly. "Or . . . wait a minute. He could be the boy who ran errands for us. I believe he is. Tommy something-or-other."
"That's right," chimed in Vonica. "His name is Tommy Larkan."
"Okay," snapped the officer. "We can't hang in orbit all day! The Mergan Port Security men can get the truth out of this kid, and they will. You men, take the boy to Number Seven hatch. An autopod is being programmed to drop him back to Port City."
Cargy was hustled away. As he went, Petron and Vonica were loudly denying any complicity in the stowaway scheme. Meanwhile, Cargy's mind was busy digging out Mead's knowledge of autopods. The information was, he noted hopefully, pretty extensive. In his day, Mead had been an expert with all types of small craft, both space and atmospheric. If his data just wasn't a half-century out of date . . . !
The autopod was basically a miniature clopter, hulled and insulated for use in space, and propelled by a small set of closrem drivers that, in a planetary gravitational field, were somewhat overburdened by the pod's mass. It was a handy little vehicle for outer hull inspection and repair in free fall, and for dumping detected stowaways back to their POEs. Once its orbital velocity was nullified, there was no way it could go but down. Its drivers could power it for a safe landing, but not to go sailing away to some other planet. By using an autopod to return a stowaway, a spaceship saved the time, expense, and red tape of an extra landing and liftoff.
Cargy was safety-strapped into the pod's one seat and the transparent hatch-dome lowered over him. A tinny-voiced communicator in the pod said pod release would be in forty-five seconds. In another voice it answered itself: "Inner lock sealed, now pumping . . . Pumping complete. Outer lock opening."
Cargy gaped and gasped as the open lock revealed a rectangle of stars and the bright horizon-bands of Merga. It was more of a sight than his Mead-memories had led him to expect.
Then suddenly the pod's closrems came to life, and he was through the lock and dropping away from the big ship. Voices on the communicator told him the ship was once more on its way to Princon.
With the spaceship no longer to be reckoned with, Cargy went into action.
There were no manual controls within his reach, these components having been removed when the pod was being readied for this descent. There was not even an emergency override of the pod's flight computer.
There was, however, the mounting panel from which the manuals had been removed, and it was perforated by a dozen plug holes. Ordinarily, these holes would offer no possibilities to a pod passenger. But Cargy spent most of his time in the Mergan wilderness, and he was never without his defense batteries, worn like curving plates along his belt.
Being in plain sight as they were, and also being so standard an item of apparel on Merga, the batteries hadn't attracted a glance, much less a thought, from the spaceship's officers and crew.
Now Cargy unsnapped his safety harness and got busy. Setting his batteries on parallel for low voltage, he rammed his electroprobes into a couple of plug holes and listened with satisfaction as the closrems' roar took on a lower pitch. He was feeding a counter-current into the driver power supply. This would cause the pod to lose orbital velocity more slowly and carry him past Port City. He could have plugged in the other way and dropped out of orbit more swiftly, but that would have plunked him in the ocean instead of on land.
A good two minutes passed before the communicator yapped: "Scramble rescue squad! Autopod is overshooting! Scramble rescue squad! . . . Damnit, rescue squad! Respond!" Cargy recognized the voice as that of a Port City Control Tower supervisor.
"Uh, this is Horax. The others are at supper."
"What the hell do you mean, at supper? They eat in the squad room!"
"Well, you see, tower, there ain't never much to do, and there's this cafe just across the road, so—"
"Good God! Heads are going to roll over this! I mean that! Get to that cafe and rout them out on the double!"
"Uh, okay."
"Kid in the autopod . . . Tommy Larkan! Speak up, boy."
As he recognized the tower man's voice, and figured the man might recognize his own as well, Cargy kept quiet. The rescue squad's goofing off was going to give him at least five minutes he hadn't counted on. Which opened a new possibility. Instead of letting the pod land a few miles outside of Port City and running like hell, why not go a hundred miles or so inland, land there, and try to knock out the tracer-bleep circuit before the rescue clopter could reach the scene? That way, he could keep the pod for his own use—and useful it would be indeed once he had stripped it of its overweight hull and rigged some manual controls!
He grinned at the frantic anger of the tower man's exclamations as the pod zipped over Port City at an altitude of nearly fifteen miles. "No, he won't overshoot the entire continent," he heard him tell somebody. "He's losing altitude too fast for that."
Soon thereafter Cargy realized he was losing altitude too fast, period. At this rate he would smash the pod and himself flat when he landed. Hastily, he yanked his electroprobes out of the plug holes, switched them about, and reinserted them. The pitch of the closrems rose and Cargy felt the increased tug of their upward and slightly rearward acceleration.
But he was already beyond Dappliner Valley and still going fast. He would come down slowly enough for a safe landing, but a good two thousand miles inland!
He thought of psychivores, and his stomach tried to turn upside down. This wasn't what he'd had in mind at all!