She dropped in her seat without a sound. Price clawed for the weapon
she had at her waist. But the abrupt cessation of her voice had alarmed
the pilot. He turned around and then shouted something imperative in
Vurna, his hand going swiftly to his own belt.
Price beat him by a fractional second. His hand pressed the trigger and
the unfamiliar weapon crackled in his hand, and the pilot fell over,
letting his own shocker go skittering to the deck. The aerodyne had not
swerved from its steady westward flight. He had been sure, from what
he'd seen of its automatic stability, that it wouldn't.
Price straightened up, breathing heavily with excitement. So far, so
good.
He tied Linna's hands and feet securely with her own belt and his
handkerchief, and then attended to the pilot. Linna was already
beginning to stir, and he propped her up as comfortably as possible,
smoothing her hair back from her forehead. He smiled suddenly and said,
"I'm sorry. I really am. If there had been any other way, I wouldn't
have done it."
He kissed her on the mouth, rather swiftly because he did not have much
time, but with a full measure of feeling even so. She sighed, and he
thought her lips answered his, but he doubted if that would be so when
she came to.
He slipped into the pilot's chair and studied the controls, erasing
every other thought from his mind as he remembered what he had learned
from watching. The aerodyne was humming straight and steadily on. He
had plenty of altitude.
He began to experiment, gingerly, and by the time he was across the
river he was satisfied that he could control the craft well enough to
get by. It was considerably simpler than learning to drive a car in
the old days, and he had a lifetime of flying behind him to give him
air-sense. The craft itself was a thing of beauty, topping anything he
had ever flown. He angled southward and westward, away from the river,
traveling like a bullet.
Linna spoke from behind him. Her voice was very cold and very hard, the
voice of a stranger.
"Arrin told me I should have you bound. I left you free on my own
responsibility."
Price felt bad about that, and he said so. "Try to look at it from my
side, Linna. I have to do what I can for my own people. If you were in
my shoes--"
"Go ahead," said Linna. "Talk is obviously useless. I shan't waste any
more of it, except to tell you--"
She told him, vividly, what kind of a fool he was, and what she
hoped would happen to him before he led all of his fellow-fools to
destruction. Then she shut up and would not speak again, no matter how
he tried to soften her rage.
The dark green forest, rough-textured like a wool rug, rolled back and
away around him, and the sun was swallowed up in clouds. He strained
his eyes for the clearing that would mark the Capitol of the Missouris.
He was flying by dead reckoning. He had no compass bearing to begin
with, and the Vurna instruments were useless to him. The pilot was
beginning to come round, but Price knew better than to ask him for
instructions.
It was a red light of fires burning on the edge of night that guided
him down at last toward the timber-built Capitol. And now at last Linna
spoke, because the pilot, looking out, began to yell frantically in
Vurna. She translated.
"He says do not cut the down-blast so sharply, or you will crash. That
lever--there, under your left hand--ease it back."
Price eased it. He settled down to a rough and ragged landing, just
about where the Vurna craft had settled before, when he had been
Sawyer's prisoner. Men came out of the houses and along the streets,
to stand as they had stood then, to greet their hated over-lords with
silence and contempt.
Price jumped out of the craft and approached the fires.
* * * * *
There was a startled cry, and then his name echoed back and forth, and
the men closed around him. They were inclined to be hostile, demanding
to know where Sawyer was, and what had happened, and how he came to be
piloting a Vurna flier. Price shouted for quiet.
"Sawyer's alive. He's a prisoner in the Citadel. So are Burr and Twist.
You want to rescue them?"
That startled them. "Listen," Price started, and then he saw Oakes
pushing toward him with a small determined-looking group of men.
"Stand back," Oakes demanded. "Stand back, there. This man is a
traitor. He betrayed the council, he betrayed Sawyer. If you listen to
him, he'll betray you." He turned to Price. "You get back to your Vurna
masters. Tell them we're not going to--"
"Oh, shut up," said Price impatiently. "You're not chief here, and you
never will be, no matter if you do leave Sawyer to rot in the Citadel."
He took the shocker from his belt where he had thrust it. "I stole that
flier from the Vurna, and I stole this, too. I'll use it on you if I
have to."
Oakes looked ugly, but he hesitated, and Price said, "Some of you, if
you want proof of what I say, go look in the flier. Go on."
Several men detached themselves from the crowd and went off at a trot
toward the flier. Presently they began to whoop and halloo. They came
back carrying the pilot and Linna, who looked at Price with the utmost
hatred.
"It looks like a trick to me," said Oakes. "They could have been bound
on purpose."
Price said, "Does it look like a trick that every starship of the
Citadel fleet took off last night? You must have heard or seen them,
even at this distance."
"Yes," said a lean farmer, "streaks of fire in the sky before dawn. I
was milking."
Others had seen them, too. And now a note of excitement crept into
their voices.
"What's it mean? What's happened there? What are you after?"
"The Citadel is stripped," he said. "And I know where the fire-control
is that commands the Belt. With this flier I can land right on the
Citadel without being challenged. I can take some of you with me, and
we can knock out those weapons. You can walk right in, with no more
opposition than brave men ought to be able to handle. You--"
"Price," said Linna, in a voice of absolute horror, "you don't know
what you're doing. The fleet has gone out to fight the Ei. Arrin forced
some information out of the captives--the Ei fleet is somewhere outside
this solar system, and our fleet's out to intercept it."
The terror in her voice increased. "But if the Ei forces evade our
fleet and strike directly at our base here--don't you see, only our
great missile-batteries around the Citadel can defend Earth! If you
storm the Citadel, there'll be no defenses at all."
He said, "Linna, I know you believe in the Ei. Probably most of your
people do. But you've never seen one, in a century no one on Earth has
seen one. They're a myth, a political stratagem, that's all."
She shook her head, groping desperately for words. "Don't follow him!"
she cried out to the men. "Don't listen to him. We're fighting for your
lives and safety too. Don't be so mad as to stab us in the back now!"
They looked at her in the firelight, the flint-faced men who were weary
of Star Lords. Then, without paying Oakes any attention at all, they
looked at Price.
"He's right," drawled one of them. "The star-spawn have given us the
lie about the Ei too long. Ain't a kid on Earth believes it."
Linna's head bent hopelessly forward, and she turned away. She still
believes it, every word, thought Price. Poor Linna. He would have given
anything to comfort her.
But there was no time for comfort, no time for anything but planning.
He said,
"You've heard, you know this chance may never come again--are you with
me?" And they answered, _Yes!_
"All right," said Price. "All right, we've got to have a council, to
make plans, and then we'll have to move fast to strike before the fleet
comes back. Who are your leaders after Sawyer?"
Five or six men came forward, district sub-chiefs. One of them nodded
his head toward the two Vurna.
"What'll we do with them?"
"Treat them well," said Price sternly. "They're your assurance of
Sawyer's life." He didn't know whether they were or not, but he didn't
want Linna to suffer even discomfort because of him. He added, "Make
sure they don't talk to anyone, though. And remember, there was a
traitor at the big council. You'd better all keep a look-out, for
signals and communication-devices. And now let's talk."
* * * * *
The council lasted far into the night. Price's biggest problem was to
persuade the tribesmen not to bring their guns.
"The metal-detector units on the flying-eyes would spot you before
you'd gone ten miles into the Belt, and I can't take the control-room
that far ahead. It couldn't possibly be held that long, and no matter
how we might smash the weapon-controls they'd have time to patch them
up and use them on you. You'll have to infiltrate the Belt on all
sides, keeping under cover, and get within striking distance before I
land on the Citadel. Besides, against the Vurna shockers, your guns
aren't much more use than your hunting bolos. We'll try and give you
better weapons, once we're inside."
"Of course," said one leathery-faced sub-chief, "when you've got us and
the Ohios and Kentucky's and the rest all in the Belt, it would be a
mighty easy thing for you to give them word at the Citadel, and have us
all wiped out at once, like that."
Price said harshly, "It's up to you, whether you want to take the
gamble or not. If I'm on the level, you can take the Citadel and get
the Star Lords off your back. If I'm not, you're dead. But you won't
get a chance like this again. Make up your minds."
They made them up.
"How shall word be sent in time to the other tribes? It'd take days for
a man on horseback to get around to the east and north."
"I'll take the word," said Price. "In the flier. By sundown tomorrow,
there'll be men from every tribe ready to move into the Belt. And pick
me half a dozen seasoned men to go along, under a sub-chief. Half a
dozen men you can trust for the fate of the whole attack."
The leathery old chief, whose name was Sweetbriar, said quietly, "I'll
pick you six, and I'll go along."
His gaze locked with Price's, and Price smiled.
"I'll give you the shocker," he said. "You can use it any time you see
fit. And _that_ should convince the other tribes they can count on me."
"Should," said Sweetbriar, nodding. "Now we'd better reckon up our
distance. As I see it, this'll work out something like a big beat, and
if we don't all get there together, we might better have stayed home."
They settled all the details, the forced marches by night, the meager
weight of food each man was to carry. Price managed to get an hour's
sleep before he took off in the pre-dawn gloom to rouse the other
tribes. When he slept he dreamed of an iron mountain, impregnable,
crowned with destruction, watching incessantly with a thousand eyes. In
the dream, he knew that no mere men could ever take it.