The Ladder in the Sky by John Brunner Read Free Book Online Page B

moaned. Kazan gave him a further incurious glance. He nodded and looked for an empty bunk on which to set his gear.
    The man seemed to gulp an enormous mouthful of air. As if compelled by something outside himself, he took three rapid paces to close the gap between them and put his big hard hand briefly on Kazan’s chest.
    “But you can’t be here,” he said. His voice broke like a child’s, and the words were followed, by a whimper. Then he spun to face the others present, who were staring puzzled at his extraordinary actions.
    “He’s dead!” he choked out. “It’s his devil that’s brought him! He’s dead and eaten in the lake by the fortress, and his devil has brought him back! Don’t you understand me? That’s Kazan, the man Bryda sold to the power of darkness, the man who walked on the air to rescue Prince Luth! He’s a dead man walking, I tell you! Get out of here!”
    He was barely in time to lead the rush from the door.

VII

    Captain Ogric halted abruptly in his tracks. From somewhere in the belly of the ship was coming such a clashing and banging one would have thought a herd of wild animals was coming aboard instead of a collection of raggedy, underfed migrant workers. He had been on his way to dine with the port commandant, a traditional act of courtesy the last night before a ship lifted for space.
    But at the racket which he heard, he turned aside and began to stride down a corridor in the direction from which the cries and crashes came.
    Rounding a corner, he went full tilt into his master-at-arms, who jumped back with a cry of dismay and threw up a smart salute. Captain Ogric, who was known as White Dwarf to his crew because of his small size and illimitable energy, fixed him with a glare.
    “For the love of life, what’s going on?” he demanded.
    “Beginning of a riot in the workers’ quarters, sir,” the master-at-arms said. “We’re penning it up as much as we can, but there seems to be some superstitious reason at the bottom of it which they’re more scared of than they are of my men. A small group of them turned out of the cabin allotted because they said they wouldn’t share it with another man who was just sent aboard. Claim he’s a zombie, or something—say he’s a dead man walking. Some local cult, I guess.
    “We took out the man who started the trouble, a big bully called Hego—white as a sheet, practically wetting himself with raw terror. You never saw anything like it, sir! I thought I’d avoid further trouble by transferring the so-called ‘dead man’ to another cabin, but the word got around, and half of them are saying they won’t fly in the same ship as him. Want to break out of the ship and go back to the city.”
    “Ugly?” the captain rapped.
    “Quiet at the moment. But rumbling. Like a volcano.” The master-at-arms wiped sweat off his forehead. “I was just going to send down to the examination huts for Lieutenant Balden.”
    Ogric kept his face from showing his feelings, but he made a mental note to remind Lieutenant Balden privately that when he was put in charge of getting a batch of workers aboard, that didn’t mean lounging at the barrier gate and eyeing the women among them. But he wasted only a moment on that. In the forefront of his mind was what the port commandant had told him when he first landed and went to present his compliments.
    “I wish you joy of them,” the port commandant had said. “But I’ll tell you what your advertising is going to bring in—the dirtiest bunch of thieves and cutthroats who ever disgraced this continent. They’ll come out of the Dyasthala, the thieves’ slum in the city which they cleared the other day about half a century after the job fell due. I guess your only advantage is that none of them will trust any of the others out of sight, so you won’t have the danger of them organizing mutiny. But you’d best make the trip a fast one to Vashti—or I wouldn’t put it past them to conceive the idea of