Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 39: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE WEDGE Fathers, though. They expelled me, for reasons sufficient to promote me to a secular education under the Foundation. Well, look, I'd better push off. How’s your quota this year?” Gorm crushed out his cigarette and ad- justed his cap. “I’ve got my large cargo going now. I'll make it.” “Lucky fellow,” gloomed Devers, and for many minutes after Les Gorm left, he sat in motionless reverie. So Eskel Gorov was on Askone—and in prison as well! That was bad! In fact, considerably worse than it might appear. It was one thing to tell a curious youngster a diluted version of the~ business to throw him off and send him about his own. It was a thing of a different sort to face the truth. For Lathan Devers was one of the few people who happened to know that Master Trader Eskel Gorov was not a trader at all; but that entirely different thing, an agent of the Foundation! Two weeks gone! Two weeks wasted. One week to reach Askone, at the ex- treme borders of which the vigilant war- ships speared out to meet him in converging numbers. Whatever their detection system was, it worked—and well. They sidled him in slowly, without a signal, maintaining their cold distance, and pointing him harshly towards the central sun of Askone. Devers could have handled them at a pinch. Those ships were holdovers from the dead-and-gone Galactic Empire—but they were sports cruisers, not warships; and without atomic weapons, they were so many picturesque and impotent ellipsoids. But Askel Gorov was a prisoner in their hands, and Gorov was not a hostage to lose. The Askonians must know that. And then another week—a week to wind a weary way through the clouds of minor officials that formed the buffer between the Grand Master and the outer world. Each little sub-secretary required soothing and conciliation. Each required careful and nauseating milking for the flourishing sig- nature that was the pathway to the next official one higher up. For the first time, Devers found his trader’s identification papers useless. Now the Grand Master was on the other side of the guard-flanked, gilded door—and two weeks had gone. Gorov was still a prisoner and Devers’ cargo rotted useless in the holds of his ship. a The Grand Master was a small man; a small man with a balding head and very wrinkled face, whose body seemed weighed down to motionlessness by the huge, glossy fur coilar about his neck. His fingers moved on either side, and the line of armed men backed away to form a passage, along which Devers strode to the foot of the Chair of State. “Don’t speak,” snapped the Grand Master, and Devers’ opening lips closed tightly. “That’s right,’ the Askonian ruler re- laxed visibly. ‘I can’t endure useless chatter. You cannot threaten and I won’t abide flattery. Nor is their room for injured com- plaints. I have lost count of the times you wanderers have been warned that your devil’s machines are not wanted anywhere in Askone.” “Sir,” said Devers, quietly, “there is no attempt to justify the trader in question. It is not the policy of traders to intrude where they are not wanted. But the Galaxy is great, and it has happened before that a boundary has been trespassed unwittingly. It was a deplorable mistake.” “Deplorable, certainly,” squeaked the Grand Master. “But mistake? Your people on Glyptal IV have been bombarding me with pleas for negotiation since two hours after the sacrilegious wretch was seized. I have been warned by them of your own coming many times over. It seems a well- organized rescue campaign. Much seems toc have been anticipated—a little too much for mistakes, deplorable or otherwise.” The Askonian’s black eyes were scornful. He raced on, “And are you traders, flitting from world to world like mad little butter- flies, so mad in your own right that you can land on Askone’s largest world, in the center of its system, and consider it an unwitting boundary mixup. Come, surely not.” Devers winced without showing it. He said doggedly, “If the attempt to trade was deliberate, your veneration, it was most in- judicious and contrary to the strictest regu- lations of our Guild.” “Injudicious, yes,” said the Askonian, curtly. “So much so, that your comrade is likely to lose life in payment.” Devers’ stomach knotted. There was no irresolution there. He said, “Death, your veneration, is so absolute and irrevocable a . phenomenon that certainly there must be some alternative.” There was a pause before the guarded comiclooks (©