Two weeks later, dressed in the black and scarlet of the Vardda spacemen, Trehearne left Llyrdis behind him for the starship Saarga, outbound for Hercules.
TEN
The Saarga was not like the ship that had brought Trehearne from Earth. She was older and shabbier and clumsier, a great lumbering beldame of a ship, with enormous capacity for cargo and no space at all for passengers. Officers and crew were cramped into quarters functionally reduced to the absolute minimum, and there were no such luxuries as lounges and observation domes. But to Trehearne she was a thing of beauty, of miracle and wonder. Every dent and scar on her unlovely bulk-heads recorded a voyage to a nameless sun. The crammed and odorous vaults of her belly were storehouses of exotic riches. She was outbound for Hercules, and he was part of her. He was no longer merely a hungry onlooker. He belonged. He worshipped her.
He saw her first lying hugely in the dock, her scored and pitted hull-plates giving back a dull glint from the sun. He looked up at her, and then around him at the tremendous clamor of the port, and then he strode down along the walkway feeling ten feet high and happy as a kid at a carnival. He reported aboard, was duly checked in and assigned to quarters in a very small cabin with four very narrow bunks, where he good-naturedly allowed himself to be elbowed into the least desirable upper. His cabin-mates were all younger than he, but they were veterans, and he was forced to admit that this was his first professional voyage.
"Trehearne," said the dark-haired youngster in Lower Two, turning the name over on his tongue and frowning. "Funny sort of name—I've heard it somewhere."
The copper-haired youngster—the youngest—in Upper One, said, "I know. My uncle was talking about him. He's the fellow they found on Earth. Aren't you, Trehearne?"
"Yes."
The dark-haired youngster whistled. "Were you in luck! It was a million-to-one chance you'd ever even meet another Vardda. What's it like on Earth? I've never been there."
"It's all right," Trehearne said, "for Earthmen."