Stephen R. Donaldson - The Real Story: The Gap into Conflict (Gap Series, 1)

by Stephen R. Donaldson

Most of the crowd at Mallorys Bar Sleep over in Delta Sector had no idea what was really going on. As far as they were concerned, it was just another example of animal passion, men and women driven together by lust - the kind of thing everybody understood, or at least dreamed about. The only uncommon feature was that in this case the passion included some common sense. Only a few people knew there was more to it.

Curiosity wasnt a survival trait in DelSec; it certainly wasnt the pleasure it might have been in Alpha, ComMine Stations alternative entertainment/lodging Sector. Laidover miners, discredited asteroid pilots, drunks and dreamers, and a number of men who never admitted to being ore pirates - the people who either didnt fit or werent welcome in Alpha - all had learned incuriosity the hard way. They considered themselves too smart to ask the wrong questions in the wrong places, to notice the wrong things at the wrong times. None of them wanted trouble.

For them, the story was basically simple.

It began when Morn Hyland came into Mallorys with Angus Thermopyle.

Those two called attention to themselves because they obviously didnt belong together. Except for her illfitting and outdated shipsuit, which she must have scrounged from someone elses locker, she was gorgeous, with a body that made drunks groan in lost yearning and a pale, delicate beauty of face that twisted dreamers hearts. In contrast, he was dark and disreputable, probably the most disreputable man who still had docking-rights at the Station. His swarthy features were broad and stretched, a frog-face with stiff whiskers and streaks of grease. Between his powerful arms and scrawny legs, his middle bulged like a tire, inflated with bile and malice.

In fact, no one knew how he had been able to keep his docking-rights - or his tincan freighter, for that matter - as long as he had. According to his reputation, anyone who ever became his companion, crew, or enemy ended up either dead or in lockup. Most people who knew him predicted he would end up that way himself - dead, or in lockup until he rotted.

He and Morn looked so grotesque together; she staying with him despite the clear disgust on her face, he ordering her around like a slavey while his yellowish eyes gleamed that none of the men nearby could resist a little harmless scheming, a bit of gap-eyed speculation. If I could get her away from him - If she were mine. But the story was just beginning. No one was surprised by the nearly tangible current which sparked across the crowd when she and Nick Succorso spotted each other for the first time.

In a number of ways, Nick Succorso was the most desirable man in DelSec. He had his own ship, a sleek little frigate with a gap drive and an experienced crew. He had the kind of piratical reputation that allowed him to seem bold rather than bloodthirsty. His personal magnetism made men do what he asked and women offer what he wanted. And the only flaws in his cavalier handsomeness were the scars under his eyes, the cuts which underlined everything he saw and grew dark whenever he saw something he intended to have. Some people said hed inflicted those cuts himself, just for effect - but that was merely envy and spite. No one could be as desirable as Nick without inspiring a few snide remarks.

The truth was that hed received those scars years ago, the only time hed ever been bested. Theyd been put on him to mar him, a sign of contempt for his upstart arrogance: the woman who gave them to him hadnt considered him worth killing.

But hed learned from them. Hed learned never to be beaten again; learned to make sure that all his contests were unequal, in his favor. Hed learned to wait until he was in control of what happened. Common sense.

Members of his crew later admitted that theyd never seen his scars go as dark as when he spotted Morn Hyland. And her pale beauty ached toward him instantly - passion or desperation - bringing brightness to eyes which were dull in Angus Thermopyles company. The only surprise was that neither of them did anything about it. The electricity between them was so strong that the spectators wouldnt have been taken aback if Morn and Nick had thrown off their clothes and jumped for each other right there in the bar.

Most of the crowd had no idea what restrained them. She was a mystery, of course. But he certainly didnt have a reputation for restraint.

Nearly two weeks later, however, they did what everyone was waiting for. When Com-Mine Security broke into Mallorys and charged Angus Thermopyle with a crime serious enough to make an arrest succeed even in DelSec, Morn Hyland was suddenly at Nicks side. And just as suddenly they were gone. Lust and common sense. Their charged flesh drew them together; and she got away from Angus at just the right moment. They left to become the kind of story drunks and dreamers told each other early in the Stations standard morning, when Mallorys was quiet and the thin alloy walls seemed safe against the hard vacuum of space and the luring madness of the gap.

The last anyone heard, Angus was rotting as predicted under a life sentence in the Station lockup.

That, of course, was not the real story.

Some of the people who lurked in the dim light knew better. They were the ones in the corners who drank less than they appeared to, smoked less, talked less. Pushing their mugs around in the condensation which oozed off the plastic because the air processing in DelSec was never as good as it should be and nobody could sit in Mallorys without sweating, these men knew how to listen, how to ask questions, how to interpret what they saw - and when to go somewhere else for information.

Most of them were a bit older, a bit less self-absorbed; perhaps a bit more profound in their cynicism. If they were pilots, they were here because this was the life they could afford and understand, not because drink or drugs, incompetence or misjudgment, had cost them their careers. If they were miners who couldnt get or no longer wanted work, they were here to stay near the taste and dreams of prospecting, the vision of a strike so vast and pure that it was better than being rich. If they were born or naturalized inhabitants of the Station, they were here to keep company with the clientele for their particular goods or services - or perhaps to keep tabs on the market for the whispers and hints they purveyed.

Such people looked at what they saw with more discerning eyes.

When Morn Hyland and Angus Thermopyle came into Mallorys, the men in the corners noticed the way her whole body seemed to twist away even when she sat close beside him. They heard the dull, almost lifeless sound of her voice when she spoke - a tone of suppression unexpected from someone who had presumably spent weeks or months away from people and drink. And they observed that he kept one hand constantly fisted in the pocket of his grease-stained shipsuit.

After Angus took her out, some of these men also left - but not to follow. Instead, they went to have unassuming, apparently casual conversations with people who had access to the id files in Com-Mine Stations computers.

The story they gleaned concerned something more interesting than animal passion and common sense.

By one means or another, they learned that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the fact that Morn Hyland wasnt known in DelSec. Shed never been there before. During her one previous layover on ComMine, shed stayed in AlSec.

Shed come out from Earth on one of the really wealthy independent oreliners, a family operation so successful that she and all her relatives did everything first class because they could afford it. Crossing the gap, the Hylands had docked at Com-Mine Station, not to pick up company ore for the orbiting smelters around Earth, but to buy supplies; they were headed for the belt themselves.