A Scatter of Stardust by E. C. Tubb Read Free Book Online Page A

know.”
    “Of course I have to be artful about it,” continued the demon chattily. “I have to get a name, you know, sort of a reference for the ritual. If I can’t get a name then I try to get hold of something personal. I thought I had you when you gave me that cigarette but the damned thing burned away. Usually I get them to sign the agreement in blood. They didn’t used to mind that.” He relaxed deeper in his chair. “All clear now?”
    “Why?”
    “Why the return visit? Well, it’s all part of the game,” explained the demon. “And it balances out the distortion of our respective universes. Something to do with the fifth law of entropy I believe.”
    “Why me?” croaked Chris. He wheezed out a lungful of smoke. “What do you want with me?”
    “Not much,” said the demon. “Just the usual trade.”
    “Is that all?” Chris felt much better. “I can only give you information, you know, we discussed that before.”
    “Nothing wrong with information,” said the demon cheerfully. “Of course, I’ve really got the edge on you things. I live much longer and so can hold the force field intact for quite a while. I’ll feed you and the rest of it, but I won’t let you go until we’ve struck a mutually satisfying bargain.” He stooped and lifted a box from the floor. It looked awfully familiar. It was, Chris realized, a fair copy of the external appearance of his portable radio.
    “I’ll tell you what I want,” continued the demon. “I’ve made this as you can see. All you have to do is to tell me how to shrink musicians so as to fit inside.”
     

 
    The Shrine
     
    The ship came from darkness, drifting down like a snowflake, all cones„ and planes and spires of polished metal, spotted and mottled with patches of golden light. It feathered soundlessly and gently toward the tiny world and settled on a rolling green lawn, seeming to sigh as it settled, as the big engines which defied gravity muted into silence, as the metal of the ship relaxed after the Journey.
    The sigh was echoed in the control room.
    “Journey’s end.” The captain wasn’t human and he spoke Universal with a liquid sibilance, but he was intelligent and had about him something of the mystic. The navigator respected his mysticism.
    “Journey’s end,” he echoed. He wasn’t human either but his form was as different from the captain’s as a man’s is from a frog. He spoke with a harsh bark, and his native polysyllabic name, as translated into Universal, was Aarne. He glanced through one of the ports. “They improved the place,” he commented. “Some new trees, a wider lawn, and wasn’t that a swimming pool we saw on the way down?”
    “Possibly.”
    “Money’s been spent here,” said Aarne. “A lot of money. All this refashioning of a hunk of dead rock into a miniature world.” He stamped on the floor. “Gravity even, they didn’t have all this in the old days.”
    “They didn’t have a lot of things.” The captain sighed again as he stared through the port. He was wondering at the power of faith. It was something, so he had once heard, which could move mountains. It had certainly, in this place, done more than that.
    “Well?” said the navigator. He was of a young race and the weight of tradition rested lightly on his shoulders. “What now?”
    “We wait.”
    “Is that all?” It was the navigator’s first trip to this place; his knowledge was confined to an out-of-date solidograph. It was the captain’s eighth, and the magic of it grew with each visit.
    “We wait until the Pilgrims have done what they came to do,” he explained. “Then we take them back to the place from which they came.”
    “And find more Pilgrims?”
    “If we are fortunate enough, yes.”
    “I see.” Aarne was young and had the impatience of youth. He moved restlessly about the control room. “You like this,” he blurted out suddenly. “You like this traveling backward and forward with the Pilgrims, don’t