Sargasso of Space (Solar Queen Series) by Andre Norton Read Free Book Online Page A

strange worlds for the relics of vanished races. One of them wasn’t even human—the green-tinted skin and hairless head stamped him a Rigellian. But his faintly scaled body, in spite of its odd sinuosity, was clad just like the others. Dane was trying not to stare at him when Mura came up and touched his arm.
    “Dr. Rich is in your cabin. You’ve been moved into the store cubby—along here——”
    A. little irlced by being so high-handedly assigned to new quarters, Dane followed Mura down to the domain, which was the steward’s own. There was the galley, the food storage freezers, and, beyond, the hydro garden which was half Mura’s concern, half Tau’s, as air officer.
    “Dr. Rich,” Mura explained as they went, “asked to be near his men. He made quite a point of it——”
    Dane looked down at the small man. Just why had Mura added that last?
    More than any of the crew Mura presented an enigma to Dane. The steward was of Japanese descent—and the apprentice had been familiar from his early training days with the terrifying story of what had happened to those islands which had once existed across the sea from his own native country. Volcanic action, followed by tidal waves, had overwhelmed a whole nation in two days and a night—so that Japan had utterly ceased to be—washed from the maps of Terra.
    “Here,” Mura reached the end of the corridor and waved Dane through a half-open panel.
    The steward had made no effort to decorate the walls of his private quarters, and the extreme neatness of the cabin tended to have a bleak effect. But on a pull-down table rested a globe of plasta-crystal and what it contained drew Dane’s attention.
    A Terran butterfly, its jeweled wings spread wide, hung by some magic in the very center of the orb, sealed so for all time, and yet giving every appearance of vibrant life.
    Mura, noting Dane’s absorption, leaned forward and tapped the top of the globe lightly. In answer to that touch the wings seemed to quiver, the imprisoned beauty moved a fraction.
    Dane drew a deep breath. He had seen the globe in the store room, he knew that Mura collected the insect life of a hundred worlds to fashion the balls—there were two others on board the Queen. One a tiny world, an aquatic one with fronds of weed curling to provide shelter for a school of gemmed insect-fish which were stalked by a weird creature two legged, two armed, but equipped with wing-like fins and a wicked pronged spear. That was in a place of honor in Van Rycke’s cabin. Then there was the other—a vista of elfin towers of silver among which flitted nearly transparent things of pearly luster. That was the Com-Tech’s particular treasure.
    “One may create such, yes,” Mura shrugged. “It is a way of passing time—like many others.”
    He picked up the globe, rolled it in protecting fiber and stowed it away in a partitioned drawer, cushioned against the take-off of the Queen. Then he pulled aside a second panel to show Dane his new quarters.
    It was a secondary store room which Mura had stripped and refurnished with a hammock and a foot locker. It was not as comfortable as his old cabin, but on the other hand it was no worse than the quarters he had had on both the Martian and Lunar training ships during his Pool cruises.
    They blasted off for Limbo before dawn and were space borne before Dane aroused from an exhausted sleep. He had made his way to the mess hall when the warning sounded again and he clutched the table, swallowing painfully as he endured the vertigo which signalized their snap into Hyperspace. Up in the control compartment Wilcox, the Captain, and Rip would be at their stations, not able to relax until the break-through was assured.
    He wouldn’t, Dane decided not for the first time since he had entered training for space, be an astrogator for any reward the Federation could dream up. One fractional mistake in calculations—even with two computers taking most of the burden of the formula