Price stood stone still, meeting her gaze. But his thoughts were racing
like startled deer. How could even the super-scientific Vurna have
guessed his incredible origin? It was a freak, a fluke that wouldn't
happen once in a million years....
Linna was saying, "Take your plane. Obsolete in model as it was,
it would require extensive machine shops to fabricate it. And your
clothing. Your shirt is of synthetic fabric, and so is the dye. It was
woven on machines. And these are _new_--not relics preserved for a
century."
Price managed to keep his voice level as he said, "So--"
"So," Linna said, "there is somewhere a hidden community big enough to
keep the old technologies of your people alive. A community we've known
nothing about."
She regarded him in stern triumph, as though she had gained a victory.
Price sat down on the narrow bed. He had an hysterical desire to laugh,
but he did not do that. Instead, he turned his head away from Linna as
though to hide his dismay, but actually he was trembling with a sudden
realization.
She had just given him his chance, if he kept his head and played it
right. In her wholly mistaken, if quite natural, deduction of his
origin, she had given him a chance for escape.
She misread his silence. "Further lies will not do you any good."
Astonishingly, there was pity in her voice. "I see now what you
intended. You wished to share your community's knowledge with other
tribes, to give them new weapons in their fight against us. And now you
hope still to keep your secret, so someone else may succeed where you
failed. Believe me, Price, I understand--"
"Do you?" he said savagely.
"Yes," she said, her voice hardening. "And I understand better than
you what would have happened to your army if they had attacked, armed
with pitiful little planes like yours and only slightly more powerful
rifles." She spoke swiftly to the guard outside, and then snapped at
Price, "Come, I want to show you something."
She led Price out between the green-clad guards. They went down the
echoing corridor of the cell-block, and into a lift that took them
swooping up a long way, and then into another corridor and eventually
into a medium-sized room circular in shape, completely surrounded
by a double row of screens. The lower screens gave a fixed view of
the terrain within eyeshot of the Citadel itself. The upper screens
reflected a roving, ever-shifting view of the remoter Belt, the woods
and prairies, herds of wild cattle grazing, deer bounding with their
white flags up, the lonely starships waiting on their isolated fields.
Four men in uniforms of dull gold watched the screens and checked a
series of clicking recorders. Beneath each screen was a battery of
studs.
"You see how much chance you would have of approaching unseen? And do
you see what would happen to an army? One man here, touching those
firing studs, and the whole Belt would become in seconds like the
barren outside the walls. Nothing would be left. Nothing."
In Linna's eyes now there was the same impatient contempt for his
stupidity that he had seen there before, when Arrin had talked to
Sawyer in the square.
"And this is how you would help them--to their destruction."
If the situation had been what she imagined it to be, that would have
been the truth. Price allowed a sullen doubtfulness to show in his
face. But he said,
"What about your starships? You wouldn't destroy them."
"They can be flown on auto-pilot at a moment's notice, out of harm's
way. Oh, for heaven's sake, Price, can't you see that I'm trying to
help you? I don't want your people slaughtered. We, the Vurna, don't
want them slaughtered. But if you persist in battering your stubborn
heads--"
"All right, all right," he said crossly. "You've got the weight and
weapons. Let's get out of here. It makes me sick to think how helpless
we are."
* * * * *
They went outside into the corridor again. At its end there was a
window, and Price stood by it, looking out. He pretended to be sunk in
bitter reflection, but his brain was spinning furiously, trying to see
all ways at once. He said,
"If I show you where our hidden colony is, you'll only smash it up.
There's a lot there that isn't weapons, things that could help build up
a civilization again. Why should I show you?"
"To keep some other idiot from trying to do what you have done. We
won't destroy anything that's useful, only control it as to the
production of weapons." She sighed, and added, "I hate to put it this
way, Price, but if you don't show me willingly it will have to be
another way, and I don't want that."
There was a real ring of sincerity in her voice. Price grumbled around
a bit, permitting himself to be beaten.
"All right," he said at last. "I guess there's nothing for it. I'll
show you."
"Good. I'll arrange for a flier--"
Her voice was drowned out by a sudden hooting of sirens all through the
Citadel. For a moment no one moved. Linna's face became drained of all
color. The guards stiffened, staring in a kind of wonder. The steel
shutter of the window clanged to with a ringing snap, and Price could
feel in that vast building a stirring and buzzing as of a menaced hive.
"What is it?" he asked, his feeling of triumph beginning to slip away
almost before he had had time to enjoy it.
Linna's voice was quite steady when she answered. "Possibly nothing.
You must return to your cell now. We'll discuss the trip later."
The sirens stopped.
The guards hustled Price along urgently now, as though they had more
important things to attend to. The Vurna were shifting rapidly from
places to other places, but all in good order. Only their faces were
tense and they did not talk except to pass an order or ask for one.
It was obvious that there was an alarm, that the Citadel was taking
up battle stations, and that everyone was, if not afraid, at least
severely uneasy. Price began to be uneasy too. Nevertheless, he noted
the symbol that identified the floor, and studied the life-controls as
he was dropped down to the prison level again.
In perfect silence they stepped from the lift and started down the
corridor toward Price's cell. Then the sirens screeched again, but on a
different note. Linna gave a little sigh. Without thinking about it he
put his arm around her.
"All clear?"
"Yes. What a relief. I'm technically a soldier, but I'm afraid a
technicality is all it is. I--shh! Listen."
A clear metallic voice had begun to speak over some communicator system
that apparently reached every corner of the Citadel. Linna drew away
from him without seeming to notice his familiarity, listening intently.
The guards listened too, and so did three or four other Vurna visible
in the corridor. Price could understand nothing, except that the word
"Ei" occurred several times. The Vurna's favorite bogeyman. He wondered
if the Vurna powers-that-were used it to hoodwink their own people,
too. It would explain Linna's sincerity, Arrin's honest annoyance, if
they themselves believed in a menace called the Ei.
The window at the end of the corridor had reappeared as the safety
shutter slid back. Through it, tantalizingly small and far away, Price
watched the landing of a starship, and it was disappointingly remote
and unreal as a scene done with models for an old film.
Until he felt the mighty fabric of the Citadel, man-made mountain of
steel and iron, quiver underneath him with the shock-wave of that
landing. Then he knew.
The voice stopped speaking. There was a moment of dead quiet, as though
what the voice had said was more momentous than the alarm. Linna's face
was pale again, and the guards looked both excited and apprehensive.
One of them spoke to Linna, and she shook her head, apparently giving
him a reassuring answer.
Price said irritably, "Can you tell me what's going on?"
"There was a skirmish," she said, "out there. That's what the alarm
was, to tell us there was fighting going on, but of course it was
already over. There was only one Ei ship, a scout."
"Oh," said Price, and almost smiled. Scramble them once in a while,
keep them on their toes. Remind them of the menace. It was a simple
technique. Earthmen had evolved it quite early.
People were talking now. He could hear their voices echoing down the
metal halls, excited, fearful. Several went to the window to crane
their necks at the distant starship. And then the metallic voice began
to speak again, very crisp and clipped.
"Maximum security," Linna said. "All corridors cleared, all doors and
safety bulkheads locked. All off-duty personnel in quarters. Go in,
Price." She pointed to his cell door. "I have to hurry."
The corridor was clearing like magic. Price hung obstinately in the
doorway. "What now?"
"They captured the scout. They're bringing in two of the Ei--alive."
One of the guards shoved him in, and the door slammed shut on its
magnetic lock.
Price lay down on the bunk. So they had captured a scout, and they
were bringing in two Ei, alive. And everybody in the Citadel was
ordered behind locked doors. Handy. Very. He was beginning to feel
less hostility toward at least some of the Vurna. They were not so
hard-headed and skeptical as the Earthmen. They believed, and the
belief was keeping them here to man an outpost fort when they would
doubtless much rather return home.
He found himself unaccountably pleased that he had an excuse to stop
hating Linna.
He thought about the plan he had in mind until he went to sleep.
* * * * *
It was difficult, in that windowless and practically sound-proof place,
to judge the passage of time. To Price it seemed like centuries. He
slept, and woke, and ate, and paced around, and fretted between hope
and a despairing certainty that Linna had forgotten all about him. He
slept again, and was awakened from that sleep by the deep shuddering
of the Citadel as a starship either landed or took off. He lay
drowsily wondering what it was like to fly one of those mighty craft,
traitorously wishing he was a Vurna so he might have a chance to find
out, and dreaming of space and stars and foreign worlds.
The Citadel shook again, and yet again, and Price came wide awake. He
counted twenty-one, and there was no way of knowing how many landings
or take-offs had occurred before he woke, or too far out in the Belt to
be noticed here.
Certainly some large movement was underway. He took to pacing again, in
a sweat of worry over what this meant, not to the Vurna, but to him.
After what seemed an eternity the door opened and Linna stood there,
looking pale and grave. There were no guards with her. She was alone.
"The flier is waiting, Price," she said. "Let's go."
He joined her. And now he saw that the aspect of the corridor had
changed. A sliding bulkhead had closed off part of it behind a wall of
iron.
"What's that for?" he asked.
"Our--prisoners," said Linna, as though the word stuck to her tongue.
"Come on."
She seemed in a great hurry to get away from that bulkhead. Price said,
"What's the matter, aren't they human, or something?"
She gave him a look. "You still think it's all a great joke."
"I didn't say that."
"You mean it, though. You still believe the Ei are something we made up
to shift the blame from ourselves. Probably you believe we are staging
this whole matter to impress you and your chief, so that you will go
back and assure your tribesmen it is all true."
This was so uncomfortably close to what Price was thinking that he said
involuntarily, "You're entirely too smart for such a pretty girl."
"Sometimes I think," she said between her teeth, "that there is no hope
for you people, no hope at all."
Price nodded toward the bulkhead. "The solution is simple enough,
isn't it? Let me see them. Then I'll have to believe you."
"Simple enough," said Linna, echoing his words. "Do you think _you_
could stand against them? We have fought them for generations, we have
knowledge and experience, and even for us, with all our safe-guards, it
is difficult. Only a few, like Arrin, would attempt it, and I saw him
this morning. He looks like a ghost."
"And that's why you've never let any Earthmen see an Ei--because
they're too dangerous."
"No. It's more simple than that. We have had none to show. These are
the first Ei we have captured for a century, at least in this sector of
the galaxy. I have never seen one, either. And I don't want to."
She strode off, away from the iron wall across the corridor. Price
shrugged and followed her.
"Where are my friends?"
"They're here," she said, indicating the row of doors they were
passing. "Quite safe--or as safe as any of us. They'll remain here
until--" She hesitated, and Price realized for the first time that she
was deeply, genuinely afraid. "Until we see what happens," she finished.
"After that, what?"
"If they're still alive, and we're still alive, and there's still a
world, they'll go free, and perhaps they'll be wiser men than they are
now."
She would not say any more.
The lift swept them up to the roof. It was late afternoon, intensely
hot, with storm-clouds banking in the west. The roof area seemed
almost deserted, and only one flier was visible. Linna motioned him
into it and climbed in herself. She spoke to the pilot, and he took
off immediately. There was no co-pilot. Only Price, and Linna, and one
man. Price felt a secret surge of assurance, of power, like when you're
riding a streak of luck and the dice can't fall any way but right. He
sat quietly, looking out the cabin port.
He saw almost at once that the starships were gone. The whole Vurna
fleet must have taken off, shaking the Citadel with their leaving.
Probably most of the men had gone with it. The deserted appearance of
the Citadel, the lack of guards, the lack of a co-pilot, all pointed to
a skeleton force. _If we're still alive, and there's still a world_,
Linna had said. Battle, somewhere out in the far reaches of space?
Perhaps. Or maneuvers, or a show of force connected with some galactic
game he would probably never know about. It was not really important.
What was important was the fact that for the present the defenses of
the Citadel were weaker, much weaker.
He sat looking out the port and covertly watching the pilot's hands
on the controls. Linna had some kind of a side-arm strapped around
her slender waist. Probably a shocker. The pilot had one, too. He
considered the problem, and the woods and prairies rolled back
underneath.
Linna spoke suddenly, out of a long and somber silence.
"This mission is more important than ever now, Price, or I wouldn't
have been allowed to divert even one man from our defences. I beg you,
for the sake of your own people, to play fair with me. If there's
either help or hindrance in our rear, we must know it. The Ei--"
_Now_ said something in Price's mind. He did not stop to question it.
When you're riding a hot streak, let it ride. Never stop to question.
He rose and hit Linna on the point of her pretty chin.