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  SPACEBREAD is a large white cat, intelligent and daring, known throughout the galaxy as a buccaneering adventuress. She has been everywhere, seen everything. And she does not tolerate theft of her possessions or the murder of her friends.

  When an anonymous thug steals her crystal belt buckle and murders a friend, then, her honor demands that she pursue—to the distant planet Ralph.

  On her first foray into the capital city of Ralph, Spacebread encounters the alien figlet, Klimmet BarKloof, who is being sold at a slave market. She saves him from a ravenous Gnorlff (who loves to feast on figlets), and BarKloof insists on being her slave as a result. After all, she paid good money.

  Their quest for the stolen belt buckle leads them to the sinister Regent, now ruling part of Ralph, VolVarnix, whom Spacebread recognizes as an old enemy, Basemore the Basilisk, in disguise. He falsely accuses Spacebread of murder, and she and the figlet must flee, pursued by Basemore's soldiers. With the aid of Sonto, a night-black cat and spy, and Lucidan, a blind peasant woman with the gift of star-sight, they make their way north, where they discover that Spacebread's mundane buckle is the key to Basemore's plot to enslave all of Ralph. All that stands in his way are the four adventurers, an irascible dragon and a tribe of metallic butterflies. Together they must prevent Basemore's dastardly conquest and recover Spacebread's stolen buckle and her honor.

  Books by author Oscar Steven Senn

  The Double Disappearance of Walter Fozbek

  Ralph Fozbek and the Amazing Black Hole Patrol

  Loonie Louie Meets the Space Fungus

  Born of Flame

  The Sand Witch

  A Circle in the Sea

  In the Castle of the Bear

  Spacebread

  by Oscar Steven Senn

  5th Corner Publishing

  an imprint of Media Design

  5th Corner Publishing

  An Imprint of Media Design

  5569-4 Bowden Road

  Jacksonville, FL 32216

  Copyright © 1981 by Steve Senn

  All Rights Reserved.

  No Part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without written permission of the publisher.

  First 5th Corner Publishing ebook edition February 2012

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact 5th Corner Publishing Sales at 1-904-636-5131 or [email protected]

  Printing History

  Atheneum / April 1981

  McClelland & Stewart, Ltd. / 1981

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 80-18326

  Cover and illustrations by Oscar Steven Senn

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

  ISBN 978-1-938178-22-1 (Kindle)

  To Spacebread,

  Wherever She Roams

  CONTENTS

  The Stolen Buckle

  Bazaar at Black-Black

  A Royal Visit

  Night Flight

  Lucidan's Vision

  Sonto

  Guests of Lord Dezorn

  The Last Gnorda on Ralph

  Snow and Fear

  The Crystal Tower

  Into the Stars

  [1]

  The Stolen Buckle

  IT ALL BEGAN with a lone spaceship hurtling through the purple distances toward a brilliant star system. Its sun, named Fomalhaut, blazed out blindingly white in the icy vacuum, its string of planets scattered along their orbits like tiny pearls on immense necklaces. The spaceship, which was an old Vegan ore-freighter stripped down and converted to a sleek fighter, traveled without apparent motion. But it was traveling at speeds very close to Quarter Velocity, which was a fourth as fast as light travels, 75,000 kilometers in just a second. It was a bit worn, with a few dents and a large scorch on the left half and some rust streaking the tail section. As it jetted along, an occasional particle would burst into flame against the hull for a second, then vanish. Its legal code was PerCru 2748, designating it as a personal cruiser, but for some reason there were new plates along its sides and a new identification buoy signaling Capella OrbiPol 48, the Orbital Police of the Capella system. As it entered the Fomalhaut system and passed the orbits of the outer planets, the spaceship slowed to a more moderate speed. It passed through a small cluster of asteroids, and when it exited, it bore its legal code letters. The false ones spun wildly behind among the floating dust and moonlets.

  The inside of the cabin, cluttered with books and charts and floating tapes, was bathed in the suffused violet light of a distant nova cloud somewhere toward Capricorn. Spacebread unbuckled her navigation helmet and reset the Bridgetender to planetary speeds, still slower. It whirred and took over from her, plotting the proper speed and angles to land on Fomalhaut 6 in little more than half an hour.

  Spacebread stretched and yawned, untensing. She was a magnificent fluffy white cat with a brilliant ruff and whiskers and crystal yellow eyes. But she was not soft looking. There was a dumpiness and ruffle to her fur that bespoke toughness. She was from a tough breed. The feline species exists throughout the galaxy, developed here, primitive there, but always independent, always aloof.

  She reached above the control seat and yanked on the armaments handle, retracting the various weapons systems on the ship. Her tail uncurled as she stood and floated away from the control pod, then swung on handholds into the nest of cushions and chests that was her bunk. She could have had a gravity system installed in the floor of the ship so that there was no hindrance from zero gravity, but she was a bit old-fashioned. She enjoyed floating once in a while. Cuddled up now on a fat velvet cushion, she retrieved two leather bags that were floating tangled around the pipes of an aquarium. She sighed as she opened the bags and counted the gray-blue pellets within.

  “Twelve thousand,” she muttered to herself. “The rogues cheated me five crystals.”

  She laughed at this. Her laughter was like a yellow bird darting around the pipes and meters and fittings of the eccentric ship. The pellets in the bag were worn and pitted granthite crystals, numbered along two faces with strange codes. They were far more valuable than gold on civilized planets with space industries. It was her pay for something she had done on Capella S. Something mildly dangerous and not a little illegal. But the pay was very good, and she had accepted the job in part to repay an old debt. It was done.

  She sighed again. Fomalhaut 6. She would hang around for a few weeks until the furor brewed down on Capella. Fomalhaut was a frontier star, with a couple of habitable planets just beginning to become populated. Mostly riffraff traveled this far away from the Home Worlds. Scavengers, prospectors, criminals, thugs, and adventurers formed the skeletal fragments of society out here in the Scatterlings, as the undeveloped frontier worlds were called.

  Spacebread pocketed a couple of crystals and locked the remaining granthite away in her secret safe behind false circuit panels in the rear of the rocket.

  “Nearing orbit status, Fomalhaut 6. Strap in please, my lady. Confirm please,” the computer informed her in a pleasant male voice. It was named Votal and was more a friend than a machine.

  “Confirmed,” Spacebread said.

  She strapped into the control seat, the buckles sinking out of sight in her soft white fur. Beneath her, spreading from one side of the sky to the other was the night side of Fomalhaut 6. She double-checked the orbital figures, the fuel register, and the circuits of the Bridgetender. All was well.

  “Begin orbital sequence at .780 RQM, Votal.”

  “Aye-aye, milady.”

  Slowly Fomalhaut reddened the atmosphere at the edge of the planet until it peeped over the rim in a blinding
blaze of daylight. Spacebread flipped a switch, and the ports darkened accordingly. Beneath the ship the planet became more and more visible, a dusty rock with vortices of swirling clouds marbling its surface. Fomalhaut, over 400 million meters away, threw enormous shadows from the planet’s mountains.

  The orbit sequence light popped on, and various braking and adjusting rockets jarred the ship. The gravity of Fomalhaut 6 gradually became perceptible, then began sucking the ship down toward the surface. By the time the entry rockets ignited, Fomalhaut 6 filled the ports. The ship tossed a bit in the upper atmosphere, dust clouds and gasses whipped past it. The Bridgetender unfolded the vents, and the ship bucked like a mad beast, then it suddenly grasped the currents of air as if it had remembered how to fly.

  She took over control from the mechanical Bridgetender and flew the ship loop-the-loop through the clouds of the dayside of the planet, slowing down until she could clearly see the settlements and narrow roads lacing the planet’s northern hemisphere. She had often been this way. She followed a tiny artery that scarred its way around mountains and across plains, passing a few hovels every hundred miles or so. The shadows grew longer before her as the world rotated. Sunset turned the cliffs and gorges crimson for perhaps a minute. The crimson deepened to purple and then to dark indigo. She had passed through the day side in fifteen minutes. At last she was into the night side and nearing her destination.

  The craft shuddered when she slipped it down to cruising speed, and scarcely five minutes later a pinprick of light appeared on the horizon. She drove lower and lower and landed the ship. It rattled a little and settled down peacefully in a rocky gorge only a couple of hundred meters from a cluster of buildings.

  Spacebread unstrapped and, after testing her gravity legs, took a large black pack off its place on a shelf and fastened it around her. She added thick boots for surface travel, a flowing purple cape, and took a broad belt from a cupboard. It had a curved Thorian sword scabbarded on one side and various pouches and a gun on the other. There was a huge and opalescent stone for the buckle, faceted around its edges. This Spacebread buckled on. Then finally she set the ship’s guarding dials for camouflage. The ship would now appear identical to the area around, perhaps as a tall bluff or a boulder. Spacebread disembarked into the night.

  THE SPINRIM TAVERN on Fomalhaut 6 was a homey place, one of the last comfortable inns before the vast wilderness of the planet’s eastern hemisphere began to extinguish civilized settlements. It was run by Gramlin Tlatchkot, a saurian from Altair, and run fairly despite occasional card cheats and thieves who wandered through on their way to oblivion. It was rustic and basic, but woven into the cut-stone architecture were pipes and meters and panels from half a hundred space freighters and craft from all over the galaxy. Tonight Gramlin’s only barroom guests were a couple of prospectors from up the planet. They were originally from somewhere east of Betelgeuse, quadrupeds, with a vague semblance of hedgehog around their spiny faces. They sipped brandy in the corner and made plots in low, grunting voices. There were no guests in any of the rooms in the inn.

  Abruptly the huge metal door squealed open and a white figure stepped into the warmth and light and the swirling smoke from Master Tlatchkot’s pipe. The hedgehogs ceased murmuring and watched the newcomer warily.

  “Come in, come in,” said Gramlin, gesturing with his pipe.

  “Have you some warm ale for a weary traveler?” the figure said, and advanced through the dim light.

  Suddenly Gramlin’s warty eyebrows shot up, and his dinosaur face lit up. “By all the stars! Spacebread! You haven’t been this way in a Garkesoid’s age. Not since that trouble on the penal colony at four.”

  Gramlin dialed a code and immediately climbed down from his bartender’s cubicle, tail twisting. A warm ale popped out of an opening in front of Spacebread on the bar. Gramlin grinned as he waddled up to her and slapped her on the back. She grinned and thumped him in return. He guffawed loudly in the saurian’s usual squeaking wail. The Colden ornamental rings he wore in his neck folds jingled.

  “The last time I saw you all the fur on your left arm had been scorched off by a convict with a home built blaster.”

  Spacebread took a sip and let the liquid warm her insides. “I remember well. You put me up and nursed me until the fur grew back. And, as I recall, I never paid you.”

  Gramlin held out his hand and chuckled a protest, but Spacebread swiftly dipped into a pouch on her belt and held up a dully gleaming granthite crystal. Gramlin’s reticence died. He accepted the crystal and held it up in the light, lifting his quartz spectacles to get a better look.

  “Consider it paid, ma’am. We don’t get currency of this sort often out here.”

  “A fair price for saving my life,” Spacebread purred in gratitude and took another soothing drink of ale.

  “What are you doing out this way, if you don’t mind the question?” he asked as he pocketed the money.

  “I don’t mind. If anyone asks, I’m headed to the wild country to prospect for Markovium.” She lowered her voice and winked at him. “Especially if anyone from Capella asks.”

  Gramlin chuckled in reply.

  “I’ll be staying here for a few days. I’ve been missing the comforts of planet living for a while. Provided, of course, you have a room?”

  “For you?” Gramlin laughed again. “For you I would throw the Sarbanian Ambassador in the cellar with a cot. Of course I have a room! Ten of ‘em!”

  Spacebread smiled and sipped at her ale. “Beautiful, Gramlin. Could you let me have my old room for my stay, and have another of these sent up?”

  “Certainly, milady.”

  They talked in the way of old friends for as long as her ale held out. At last, when he saw she was willing to tell him no more, Gramlin walked her up the stairs and down a long stone hall to her room. It was a tidy cubicle with a table, a bed, a lamp and a chest. It was paneled in dark, rich, fine-smelling wood. He bade her good night and went back down to the bar.

  Spacebread closed the door and slowly relaxed. She was looking forward to the coming luxury of chatting with Gramlin, but for tonight, sleep beckoned too strongly.

  Time passed and a few of the tavern’s regular assortment of loners and adventurers straggled in. Long about midnight the Betelese returned, and shortly after them a burly, scarred Ralphian with blue skin came in. He ordered only a brandy but nursed it and sipped it until Gramlin began kicking the last drunks out at two. The hedgehogs had long since left.

  Gramlin turned from shoving a tentacled creature out the door.

  “Well, what are you staring at?” he said to the Ralphian. “I said it’s closing time.”

  SHE WAKENED SOFTLY in the darkness from a sound, exhausted sleep, but she kept her eyes shut. It was one of the small, life-saving habits she had developed over the years. She drifted quickly into sharp awareness. There was something in the room, not far from the end of the bed.

  It was a quiet, insignificant noise, the smooth hiss of clothing moving across clothing and flesh. She surmised that the opening of the door had awakened her. There was a quiet, measured breathing, too. Spacebread kept her own sleep rhythmed breathing. Then she heard the tinkling sound of someone picking up her belt from where it lay folded over the chest, and further, the silken noise of her sword being slowly drawn. Then the warning tone sounded, a shriek of alarm caused by alien hands unsheathing it.

  In a flash she sprang to her feet, snatching the gun from beneath her pillow and kicking the light on, at the same time shouting to frighten the intruder.

  The Ralphian, dazzled, was in the process of swinging the belt with its heavy scabbard when the light went on. It crashed violently into Spacebread’s shoulder. She staggered backward across the bed, the lamp fell. As she tripped, the gun flashed off. The Ralphian bellowed a curse and staggered out the door, the belt and scabbard rattling down the hall with him. She sprang after him. The hall was dark, and the flash as she fired was like a crackle of lightning. The blast went wi
ld, missing the Ralphian but igniting a hanging tapestry. The limping figure disappeared around the corner to the stairs.

  By the time she made it to the bar, the outside door was creaking in the wild night wind. She stood for a moment in the darkness outside and trained her senses against the roaring wind and dust, but it was no use. The Ralphian had vanished. She had no idea what he had been after. He had abandoned her sword when she surprised him. Practically the only thing of worth gone was her belt buckle; all else could be replaced. The best she could hope for was to pay a visit to her ship and scan for a nearby vehicle. Perhaps Gramlin had a detector …

  “Gramlin …” she whispered to herself and dashed back inside.

  She was about to check in his quarters when she heard a low moan in the corner. There, beneath a table, lay Gramlin in a deepening pool of blood, a dagger jutting from his side. His eyes were rolled back white and his breathing was shallow. She lifted him gently in her arms. His eyes blinked twice and then opened.

  “Did you get the swine?” he asked in a whisper croak.

  She shook her head. “No, nor do I know what he was after. All he made off with was my belt buckle.”

  “A buckle,” Gramlin gasped. “It’s madness. Madness. To live through storms and wrecks and wars only to be murdered by a petty thief in my own tavern.”

  Before she could reply, the sound of crackling and the smell of smoke brought her back to her feet. She had left the hall tapestry ablaze, and the fire had crept into the rafters.

  “No,” Gramlin coughed as she leaped up. “Let the place go with me. There’s nothing you can do for us. It’s fitting we go together.”

  Spacebread wiped a smear of dirt off his knobby forehead in the growing light of the fire and whispered beside his ear, “Master Tlatchkot, if it will help you to rest easier, this deed will be avenged.”

  But Gramlin was already gone.

  Her shoulders sagged a little, but wasting no time, she sped upstairs and down the flaming hall. Her sword and pack were as yet unsinged; she buckled one on and gripped the other grimly. The fire roared through the aging beams and rafters, and the entire roof of the Spinrim Inn was blazing by the time she made it to the door. She did not spend useful time gazing morbidly at the scene. Her attention was on the night landscape. There might still be danger abroad. She hurried out of the growing glow of the burning buildings to make less of a target.