He stepped lithely to the door and flung it open. Far down the hall
there was the faintest suggestion of a scuffle.
"A mouse, I guess." He returned to his bed, but it was plain that he
was unsatisfied.
* * * * *
The game wore on for half a metron. Perat's combinations were met with
almost sufficient counter-combinations, so that the issue hung in doubt
for move after move.
"You've improved considerably since yesterday," he admitted grudgingly.
"Not at all. It's your playing 'blind' that makes us even. No cheating!
Keep out of my mind! It isn't fair to know what I'm planning."
Oh, by the merciful god of Galaxus, if he'll stay out of mind and the
cat out of the communications room for another five minutes!
"All right, all right. I'll win anyway," he muttered, as he concluded
a combination that netted him the black queen. "You could gracefully
resign right now."
Evelyn studied the position carefully. She had made a grave
miscalculation--the queen loss had definitely not been a part of the
plan. She must contrive a delaying action that would invoke an oral
argument.
"Bishop to queen rook eight," she murmured. Her telepathic probe,
focussed on the bit of nervous tissue that the mentors had cut from
her frontal lobe and given to her mannikin as a brain, continued
its tight control. In Gorph's office, far down the wing, the little
creature was hopping painstakingly from one key to another of the
dispatch printing machine.
"... _takes priority over all other pending projects_...."
"Your game is hopeless," scowled Perat. "I'm a queen and the exchange
up on you."
"I always play the game out," replied Evelyn easily. "You never know
what might happen. Your move."
"... _five horizontal columns of metallic trans-scythium nine hundred
xedars long will be found in a Terran storeroom, our area code_...."
"All right, then. Queen takes pawn."
"Pawn to queen knight seven," replied Evelyn. It was her sole remaining
pawn, and she hoped to use it in an odd way.
Perat checked with his queen at queen bishop four, and Evelyn's king
slid to safety at queen knight eight. Perat moved his rook from queen
knight five to queen five.
"Do you intend to mate with rook to queen's square next move?" asked
Evelyn demurely.
"... _under the strictest secrecy. Therefore you are ordered not to
communicate_...."
"Nothing can prevent it," observed the Viscount of Tharn somberly. He
had already lost all interest in the game and was contemplating the
ceiling tapestries. With a lurch she brought her telepathic probe to
rest, ready to prepare a false front for his searching mind. She must
keep him out a moment longer, or all was lost.
"But it's my move, and I have no move," she objected, focussing her
probe again.
"... _signed, Perat, Viscount of Tharn, Commandant, Occupation Zone
One_."
Through that distant fragment of her mind she sensed that something was
watching the doll with feral interest.
The cat.
"So? No move? Then you lose," replied Perat.
"But my king isn't in check. You told me yourself that when my king was
not in check, and I had no legal move, that I was stalemated, and the
game was a draw."
In that other room, her telepathic contact guided the little figure
down the table leg. Slowly now, don't excite the cat into pouncing. She
had only seconds left, but it should suffice to place the dispatch in
Gorph's incoming box. The pompous little supervisor would send it by
the first jet messenger without doubt or question, and the field crew
would proceed to draw the five columns.
Pain daggered into her right leg!
[Illustration: _And then the cat pounced!_]
* * * * *
The cat had seized her homunculus by the thigh; she knew the tiny bone
had been crushed. She caught fleet, dizzy impressions of the animal
striding off proudly with the little creature between its jaws. The
letter lay where it had fallen, under the dispatch machine, almost
invisible.
The doll ceased her blind writing and drew a tiny black cylinder from
her belt. The cat's right eye loomed huge above her.
Mentally, Perat studied the chessboard position with growing interest.
"Idiotic Terran game," he growled. "Only a Terran would conceive of the
idea of calling a crushing defeat a drawn battle. I'm sorry I taught
you the game. It's really quite--_what was that?_"
"Sounded like the cat, didn't it?" responded Evelyn.
Her tiny alter ego had dropped from those destructive jaws and was
dragging itself slowly back to the dispatch. It found the message and
picked it up.
"Do you think something could have hurt it?" asked Evelyn.
The doll struggled toward Gorph's desk, leaving behind a thin red trail.
Then several things happened. Hot swords sizzled in Evelyn's back, and
she knew the enraged feline had broken the spinal column of the doll.
With throbbing intuition she collapsed her telepathic tentacle.
Too late.
Perat's probe was already in her mind, and she knew that he had caught
the full impact of her swift telepathic return. She lay there limply.
Her rib, now almost healed, began to ache dully.
The man continued to lie motionless, staring heavy-lidded at the
ceiling. Gradually, his mind withdrew itself from hers.
"So you're high-born," he mused aloud. "I should have known, but then,
you concealed it very adroitly, didn't you?"
She sat up against the wall. Her heart was pounding almost audibly.
He was relentless. "No Scythian would play chess the way you did. Only
a Terran would play for a draw after total defeat."
"I play chess well, so I am a Terran?" she whispered through a dry
throat.
Perat turned his handsome grey eyes from the ceiling and smiled at her.
His mouth lifted venomously as he watched her begin to tremble.
"Pour me a _terif_," he ordered.
She arose, feeling that she must certainly collapse the next instant.
She forced her legs to move, step by step, to the table by his couch.
There she picked up the _terif_ decanter and tipped it to fill his
glass. The dry clatter of bottle on glass betrayed her shaking hands.
"One for you, too, my dear Lyn."
She held the decanter several inches above her glass to avoid that
horrible clatter, and managed to spill quite a bit on the table.
Perat held his glass up to touch hers. "A toast," he smiled, "to a
mysterious and beautiful lady!"
He drank prone, she standing. She knew she would spill her drink if she
tried to recross to her couch.
"So you're a Terran? Then why did you kill the Terran officer on the
balcony?"
She was so relieved that she sank limply to the floor beside him.
"Why should I tell you? You wouldn't believe anything I told you now,
or that you found in my mind." She smiled up at him.
"True, true. Quite a dilemma. Should I shoot you now and possibly bring
the rage of a noble Scythian house down about my ears, or should I
submit you to mechanical telepathic analysis?"
"I am yours, viscount," she laughed. "Shoot me. Analyze me. Whatever
you wish."
She knew her gaiety was forced, and that it had struck a false note.
The iron gate of doubt had clanged shut between them. From now on he
would contain her mind in the mental prison of his own. The dispatch
beside Gorph's desk could have no further aid from her. Anyway, the cat
had undoubtedly carried off the doll.
"What a strange woman you are," he murmured. A brief shadow crossed his
face. "With you, for a little while, I have been happy. But in a few
metrons, of course, you will depart under close arrest for the psych
center, and I'll be on my way back to the Tharn suns."
Within half a metron the office force would begin straggling into the
Administration offices and her letter would be found and given to a
puzzled Gorph, who would then query Perat as to whether it should not
be in the incoming box for urgent matters. But what would Gorph do if
his superior refused to communicate with him or anyone else for a full
metron? The first messenger jet left very soon, and there was no other
for four metrons. Would Gorph send it on the first jet, or would he
wait? It was a chance she'd have to take.
She got up from the floor and sat down on the couch beside the Viscount
of Tharn. "Perat," she began hesitantly, "I know you must send me away.
I'm sorry, because I don't want to leave you so soon, and you do not
want me to leave you until the last moment, either. Anything else that
I would tell you, you might doubt, so I say nothing more. I would like
to dance for you. When I dance, I tell the truth."
"Yes, dance, but take care of your rib," assented the man moodily.
She filled his glass again with a sure hand and replaced it on the
table. Then she unloosed the combs in her hair and let it fall in a
profusion of curls about her shoulders, where it scintillated in a
myriad sparkling semicircles in the soft light of the table luminar.
She shook her shoulders to scatter her hair, and unhurriedly released
the clasp of her outer lounging gown. The heavy robe fell about her
feet, leaving her clad only in a thin, flowing under-garment, which she
smoothed languidly while she kicked off her slippers. Her mouth was
now half-parted, her eyelids drooping and slumbrous. Perat was still
staring at the ceiling, but she knew his mind was flowing unceasingly
over her body.
"I must have music," she whispered. The man made no protest when she
pressed the controls on his communications box to receive the slow and
haunting dance music from the officers' club in the next zone.
The main avenue of access to Perat was now cut. And Gorph was a bolder
man than she thought if he dared knock on the door of his chief while
she was inside.
She began to sway and to chant. "_The Song of Karos, the Great God of
Scythe, Father of Tharn folk, Dweller in Darkness_...."
Perat's glass halted, then proceeded slowly to his lips. Of course,
no educated nobleman admitted a belief in the ancient religion of the
Scythes, but how good it was to hear it sung and danced again? Not
since his boyhood, when his mother had dragged him to the temple by
main force.... He placed one palm behind his head and continued to sip
and to think, as this strange, lovely woman unraveled with undulant
body and husky voice the long, satisfying story of his god.
As she postured sinuously, Evelyn breathed a silent prayer of thanks to
the dead mentors who had crammed her to bursting with Scythe folklore.
The luminous metron dial revolved with infinite slowness.
V
One metron had passed when Perat laid his empty glass on the table,
without releasing it.
"Enough of dancing," he murmured with cold languor, cutting his
communications box back to its authorized channel. "Come here, my dear.
I wish you to kiss me."
Evelyn glided instantly to the silken couch, tossing her hair back over
her shoulders and ignoring the fact that her rib was alive with pain.
She knelt over the reclining man and kissed him on the mouth, running
her fingers lightly down his right arm. He relinquished his glass at
her touch, and she refilled it absently.
Only then did she notice that something was wrong.
His left hand was no longer beneath his head, but was concealed in
the mass of cushions that overflowed his couch in a mute, glittering
cascade.
Perat swirled his glass silently, apparently watching only the tiny
flashes of iridescence flowing from his jeweled right hand.
Evelyn thought: What made him suspicious? There's something in his left
hand. If I only dared probe.... But he'd know I was afraid, and I'm not
supposed to be afraid. Anyway, in a little while it won't matter. If
the field crew has started pulling the columns, they should be through
in half a metron. If they haven't started, they never will, and nothing
will matter then, anyway.
The man's face was inscrutable when he finally spoke. "You couldn't
have gone on much longer, anyway, on account of your rib."
"It was becoming a little painful."
"Twice you nearly fainted."
So he had noticed that.
He continued mercilessly. "Why were you so anxious to keep me shut up
for a whole metron?"
"I wanted to amuse you. We have so little time left, now."
"So I thought, until your rib began to trouble you. The reaction of an
ordinary woman would have been to stop."
"Am I an ordinary woman?"
"Decidedly not. That's why the situation has become so interesting."
"I don't understand, Perat." She sat down beside him, forcing him to
move his legs so that his left hand was jammed under the cushion.
"A little while ago, I decided to contact Gorph's mind." He took a sip.
"It seems he had been trying to reach me through the communications
box."
"He had?" She pictured Gorph's old-womanish anxiety. He had found the
sealed message, then, but hadn't been able to verify it because his
chief had been listening to a tale of gods. Had he or had he not sent
the message by the early jet? It had to be! Possibly all five of
the columns had been drawn by now, but she couldn't assume it. The
strain-pile would not erupt for a full Terran hour after the fifth
column has been drawn. From now until death, of one sort or another,
she must delay, delay, delay.
Her blue eyes were widely innocent, and puzzled, but the nerves of
her arms were going dead with over-tension. Perhaps if she threw
the _terif_ in his eyes with her left hand and crushed the numbing
supraclavicular nerve with her thumb....
Perat turned his head for the first time and looked her full in the
face.
"Gorph says he sent the message," he said tonelessly.
She looked at him blankly, then casually removed her hand from his knee
and dropped it in her lap. He must absolutely not be alarmed until she
knew more. "Apparently I'm supposed to know what you're talking about."
He turned back to the ceiling. "Gorph says someone prepared a priority
dispatch with my signature, and he sent it out. I don't suppose you
have any idea who did it?"
Time! Time!
"When I was Gorph's assistant, there was a young officer--I can't
remember his name--who sometimes forged your signature to urgent
actions when Gorph was out. This is true, Perat. My mind is open to
you."
He fastened his luminous grey eyes on her. "I presume you're
lying, but...." His mental probe skimmed rapidly over her cortical
association centers. Her skill was strained to the utmost, setting up
false memories of each of thousands of synaptic groups just ahead of
Perat's probe. On some of the groups she knew she had made blunders,
but apparently she preserved the general impression by strengthened
verification in subsequent nets. She wove a brief tale of a young
officer in charge of metals salvage who had sent an order to a field
group to recover some sort of metal, and since Gorph had been out, and
H.Q. needed the metal urgently, the officer did not wait for official
authorization. His probe then searched her visual lobe thoroughly, but
with growing skepticism. She offered him only indistinct memories of
the dead officer's identity.
"Who was the man?" asked Perat as a matter of form, sipping his _terif_
absently.
"Sub-leader Galen, I think." That would give him pause. He knew she had
offered no visual memory of Galen. He would wonder why she was lying.
"Are you sure?"
* * * * *
She wanted to look at the time-dial on the wall, but dared not. From
the corner of her eye she saw Perat's left arm tense, then relax
warily. His mental probe had fastened grimly to her mind again, though
he must know it would be effort wasted. She conjured up an image of
Sub-leader Galen in the act of telling her he was handling a very
urgent matter and that he'd tell the Viscount later what he'd done.
Then the face of the young officer changed to another of the staff,
then another, then still another. Then back to Galen.
"No, I'm not sure."
Perat smiled thinly. "You wished to gain time, and I wished to idle it
away. I suppose we have both been fairly successful."
The communications box beside the bed jangled.
"Yes?" cried Perat, all alert.
As his mouth was forming the word, his probe was collapsing within her
mind, and her own flashed briefly into his mind. The hand under the
pillow held a Faeg, aimed at her chest. But the safety catch was still
on.
"Excellency?" came Gorph's tinny voice.
"Yes, Gorph? Have you replaced the columns?"
"_Replaced_"...? That seemed to indicate that the field crew had
followed her forged order, then returned the columns by Perat's
countercommand, relayed telepathically through Gorph. But once all the
great rods were drawn, replacing them did not halt the strain-pile. The
negative potential would keep on increasing geometrically with time, as
planned, to the final goal of joint catastrophe and stalemate.
Some sort of knowledge was drumming silently at her threshold of
consciousness. Something she couldn't quite grasp. About the woman in
the stereop? Possibly. It would come to her soon.
Ignoring Perat's gloating smile, she looked casually at the metron
dial, and her heart leaped with elation, for the dial had ceased
revolving. Electrons must be flowing from the center of the ship
through the walls, outward toward the surface two thousand miles away,
and the massive currents were probably jamming all the wall circuits.
Within minutes, _finis_.
Could she really rest, now? She was beginning to feel very tired,
almost sleepy. Her duty had been done, and nothing could ever be
important again.
Gorph was answering his master over the speaker: "Yes, your excellency,
we got them back, that is to say, excepting that one of the five is
only half-way out of its cradle."
Life was good, life was beautiful. She almost yawned. Most certainly
all of the columns had been pulled out, and then four had been replaced
and something had broken down with the fifth. But they had all been
out, and that was the only thing that mattered.
"What happened, Gorph?" asked Perat, sipping at his _terif_ again. His
eyes were fastened on his mistress.
She knew that he had pulled the safety catch on the Faeg.
"When the crew took the rods out, the prime mover broke down on the
fifth one, when it was only half-way out. They brought in another mover
and got the other four rods back in, and now they're trying to repair
the first mover and push the fifth rod back."
(The fifth rod had not been completely drawn. Oh Almighty Heaven!)
"Very well, Gorph. I need not repeat that none of the rods are to be
moved out again, unless I appear to you personally. I'll talk to you
later."
The box went dead.
Perat, now taking no notice of Evelyn, finished his _terif_ leisurely.
She sat at his side, breathing woodenly. She had done all that she
could do. All five rods had not been withdrawn, and they never would
be, now.
"If all Terran women are like you," he began slowly, "I cannot
understand how you Terrans lost this battle." He did not expect an
answer, and did not wait for one. His hard eyes seemed softened
somewhat by a curious admiration. "Only your own gods know what you
have endured in your attempt to start the pile."
She looked up wretchedly.
He went on: "Yes, we learned in the nick of time, didn't we? Our
physicists told Gorph that the great rods were the core of a pile that
could have converted both ships into pure energy, with not a shred
of matter left over--something that all the fission piles in the two
galaxies couldn't do. It seems that the pile, if activated, would have
introduced sufficient energy into the low-packing-fraction atoms, from
iron on down to helium, to transform them completely from matter into
radiation.
"Unpleasant thought! Now the Scythian plan will be modified slightly.
We shall wait until we tear our globe away from yours, _far_ away, and
then prime movers left behind in your ship here can pull the columns
again, all five, this time. Our globe then proceeds into the Terran
Confederacy, and the war will be over. But of course, you'll know
nothing about that."
He regarded her wearily. "I'm sorry Lyn--or is it 'Evelyn Kane'? If you
had been of Tharn-blood, or even of the Scythian federacy, I would have
married you."
She listened to him with only half a mind. Some strange, inaudible
thing was trying to reach her. Something she couldn't grasp, but ought
to grasp. What had the mentors told her to be ready for? Exhaustion lay
like a paralyzing blanket over her inert mind.
"You killed your countryman that day," he intoned, "just to ingratiate
yourself with me. He was very generous to you. When he saw that you
wouldn't shoot him with his eyes open, he closed them. Who was he?"
"Gordon, Lord Kane. My father."
The _terif_ glass shook, and the man's face became perceptibly paler.
He breathed stridently for a while before speaking again.
This time he seemed to be calling with earnest finality to the
forbidding deity of his own warlike homeland, announcing a newcomer at
the dark portals of the god: "_This woman_...!"
* * * * *
Evelyn Kane did not shriek when the Faeg-bolt tore through her rib and
lungs. Even when she sank to the floor, the pain-lines in her own face
were much better controlled than those in Perat's.
[Illustration: _She did not shriek when the bolt tore through her._]
Then as she lay quietly on the thick, gilded carpet, with consciousness
rapidly fading and returning with the regularity of her heart
beats, she realized what had been calling to her. The piezo crystal
in her waist-purse, still hidden in the shadows of her table, had
been activated, and had brought into focus within the room the dim,
transparent outlines of a small space ship.
Perat saw it too, and his eyes widened as they traced it quickly from
wall to wall.
"It's real ..." whispered Evelyn between clenched lips. "Mentors wanted
me ... return in it ... to Terra ... secret of pile...."
A strange light was growing over Perat's face. "Of course! So that's
why your father tried so hard at the last to break through our
blockade and get a ship through! If the secret of the strain-pile
had ever reached Terra, all the Tharn suns--indeed, the whole Scythe
federation--would be novae by now! By Karos, it was a narrow thing!"
There was a soft gurgling in Evelyn's throat.
He flung his pistol away and sat down beside her, lifting her head to
his chest. "I'll call the physician," he rasped through contorted lips.
She slid a cold palm over his hot cheek, caressing it lightly. "No ...
we die...."