"I think so," he said coldly. "There are a couple of gaps yet which you
can fill in."
"What makes you think I'll do it?"
"You'll do it," he said in a brittle voice. "For instance, what are
you, real or artificial mutant?"
Her laugh was strained and cynical. "Brilliant!" she said. "_Homo
Superior_, Charles."
"All right then, keep it clammed. But we'll find out."
"You haven't found out yet," she remarked pointedly.
"We didn't always have electric lamps, either."
Carolyn shook her head in a superior manner. "You did not discover
this thing either," she said calmly. "You were shown most of it
deliberately."
"Indeed?" His voice was sarcastic.
"We knew that someone high-up and undercover had furnished you with a
spacecraft and a forged license and set you to running into us, hoping
that your reputation would establish you as a racketeer. He used you
efficiently, so we used you more efficiently. There are two ends to a
fishline, Charles, and the fish and the fisherman never meet until one
pulls the other in. We caught Howard Clevis on the wrong end of the
line, so to speak. We also--"
"You caught Clevis?"
"As soon as we knew who your contact was we pulled him in. So if you
are expecting a flight of military craft to come racing up in time
to intercept the rendezvous ship we have out there, forget it. The
military are still on the landing blocks at the spaceport."
Farradyne whirled and peered into the radar. The single pip was close
and closing the range swiftly but there was nothing else on the
"scope." It was a huge ship, if the size of the radar response meant
anything and Farradyne peered into the coupled telescope.
Nothing like it could ever have been built in secret anywhere among the
habitable planets of the solar system. The size of it was such that the
metal alone, even if one piece were placed with each manufacturer to
conceal the process, would have attracted notice, and the rest of the
project would require the resources of a planet to feed it and the men
that built it. It would be like trying to build a four-hundred-inch
telescope in secret; the very least that could happen would be some
avid press agent taking note of a massive casting and using it in an
advertisement, and that would start the parade.
Farradyne turned away from the telescope. "Baby, what a sucker you
played me for!" he jeered. "So I was to be your lover, your husband?
Together, hand in hand we go to cement the first interstellar union.
The mating of a jackass and a triple-tongued canary, that the fruit of
such union will be half-assed and bird-brained." Farradyne's voice went
hard. "Well, if it's war your people want, we'll give it to you!"
Farradyne strode across the room toward the controls and as he came,
Carolyn's hand moved swiftly, catching up the microphone in a single
swoop and bringing it to her mouth. She had had the radio turned on all
the while, obviously, and Farradyne's tirade had been going out.
Carolyn cried a sing-songy rhythm into the mike. It reminded Farradyne
of an exotic trio chanting a ritual celebration of some heathen rite of
sacrifice.
He slapped the microphone out of her hand; the thing hurled out to the
end of its cord and jerked free, to crash against the far wall leaving
the cord-ends dangling open like a raw sore.
He caught her by the hair, lifted her out of the seat and hurled her
across the room. She fell and went rolling in a welter of arms and legs
until she came up against the wall beside the mike. She scooped it up
and hurled it at Farradyne's head, but he caught it in one hand and
dropped it to the floor.
He dropped into the seat and hit the levers with both hands. The
Lancaster surged upward, throwing Carolyn back to the floor in a
painful heap. The acceleration rose to three gravities, then to four.
"This trick we take," he gloated.
Carolyn moaned; it sounded like attempted laughter.
He looked into the radarscope and saw that despite his four gravities
of acceleration the monstrous spacecraft was matching him and closing
the range.
15
Farradyne watched Carolyn uncaringly as she fought herself out of the
crumpled position and succeeded in flopping over on her back where
the four gravities were not making her body press against her arms
and legs. She spreadeagled on the floor and her chest labored with
the effort. Then she relaxed, because four gravities are not too
uncomfortable when lying on the back, even though the floor below is
hard.
"Forget it, Charles," she said slowly, and with some difficulty. "You
can't run away from a ship--that can go--faster than light."
"I can try."
"You can't win."
The radio speaker came alive, "Surrender, Farradyne! Stop and submit or
we fire!"
Farradyne's lips tightened as he fought the controls so that the ship
slid sidewise, putting another vector in its course. He twirled the
volume knob to zero on the radio with a violent twist of his wrist.
"They're your friends, and they don't mind killing you," he sneered.
"I'm not afraid to die."
"I am," grunted Farradyne. "I have some knowledge that I don't want to
die without telling."
"That's why I'm willing--to keep you from telling."
His hands danced on the levers and the Lancaster turned end for end
and sped back at the huge craft almost on a sideswiping course. Out
here intrinsic velocity meant nothing, the only thing that counted
was the Lancaster's velocity with respect to the velocity of the
spacecraft from the stars. He had one advantage, his ship was smaller
and therefore it must be more maneuverable. Furthermore he had the
advantage of surprise. He could go where he pleased, and the other
pilot must follow him. Since Farradyne's changes of pace and course
would come without warning, each switch would take a few fractions of
a second to follow. On land a few fractions of a second mean little,
but in space they mean miles. On land a quartering flight meant closing
of the range; in space where the pursuer could not dig a heel into
the ground and turn on a dime, quartering flight meant adding another
vector to the course.
He widened the gap.
Somehow Farradyne realized that because a ship could exceed the speed
of light, it did not follow that the ship would be able to catch an
elusive quarry.
He looked at Carolyn, plastered against the floor by four gravities and
realized that her race could be no more hardy than his, and therefore
four gravities was about all they could take over an extended period of
time. Maybe the more hardened space-dogs could take five or six, with
training and special seats and wearing equipment. His outfit protected
him more than the flimsy stuff she wore.
Here at least he was on an equal footing with the other spacer. It was
obvious to Farradyne that interstellar velocities did not depend in
any way upon reaching that speed by plain acceleration. A force field
of some unknown kind was needed, and this force field must not be one
that permitted the body to stand, say a thousand gravities or this
force field would go on and the other ship would catch him as easily
as a greyhound could catch a rabbit--and here in space there were no
brambles in which to hide.
He snapped his Lancaster around and crossed behind the course of the
other ship. Again he widened the gap.
He had only one thing to worry about. To the present moment and until
it became evident that he would get free of pursuit, this new and
sudden enemy was hoping to take him alive. So until it became evident
that he could make his escape he had nothing to fear. Once he was free
of them, he would have to face the terror of target-seeking missiles
capable of several hundred gravities of acceleration and equally
capable of turning in midflight if he managed to make them miss him.
He wished desperately for a cargo of bowling balls or steel castings
that he could strew in his wake. He cursed his lack of foresight in not
having the control rods replaced, because a few of them might have done
the trick.
Farradyne stopped cursing. He struggled to the computer and played a
long tune on the keys, ignoring the fact that the enemy had finally
lined up on his course from behind again and was closing range.
Recollection of Brenner-Hughes and the depredations in the pile-bay
had started a train of thought that Farradyne followed with growing
interest. It was long and involved and it depended upon a large amount
of luck, good planning and ability. He hoped all three were with him.
The Lancaster made one more complex turn as the end of the punched tape
entered the autopilot. Then, if Farradyne's computations were correct,
the Lancaster's nose was pointed at Terra.
The spaceliner behind, fooled again, made a turn and began to pick up
the space that had been lost.
Farradyne saw that he had plenty of time. He waited until the punchings
on the tape cut the drive a bit, and then he went below and came
back into the control room with Brenner-Hughes' space-suit. He got
out patching material and carefully repaired the triangular rip. He
cleaned out the strong-locker, putting the greenbacks into one of the
many pouches of the suit. Then he set about checking it, testing the
air-supply and purifier, filling the food pouch and the water tank. Men
had been known to last seventy-two hours in a suit like this without
any discomfort other than the confinement. The primary danger was
running out of oxygen and the secondary danger was thirst. How much
longer than the three days depended upon the character of the man and
when he had last eaten and taken his fill of water.
The suit was checked to Farradyne's satisfaction and he started to put
it on. "How handy are your friends with that big spacer?" he asked.
"Good enough," she said.
"You'd better pray for them to be better," he said. "Because your life
depends upon how handy they are."
"Charles, you can't possibly make it."
Farradyne paused; he wanted to take time for a last cigarette. He lit
one and puffed before he said, "Honeychild, I could outguess that gang
until Sol freezes over, except that sooner or later they'll get sick
and tired of the chase and end it by launching a target-seeking missile
and that would be that. I have no intention of sitting here and letting
them catch me, either."
"So what are you going to do?"
Farradyne reached up and stopped the clock. "I've punched a very
interesting autopilot tape. It'll dodge and swoop along at about four
gravities and lead your pals a long and devious way after you and I
part company. Four gee is enough to keep you flat on your attractive
behind so you can't louse it up. Since you can't measure time too
accurately, when they grab you, you won't be able to tell 'em just when
I took off and they'll have a fine time combing space for a man-sized
mote, making his course to Terra."
"Charles?"
Farradyne snubbed his cigarette out and dropped on his hands and knees
so that he could look down into her face. "You've pitched me many a
low, soft curve to the inside," he told her quietly. "Now you are
lying there looking helpless, with those big eyes telling me that I am
leaving you here to die. Good act, Carolyn, but this time you didn't
think it out far enough. By now you should have known Farradyne well
enough to realize that staying here will kill us both because I won't
be taken alive! By scramming, maybe we'll both live. This is one battle
you lose. And the last. But maybe we'll meet somewhere again to take it
up later."
He bent down with a cynical smile and kissed her on the lips. To his
surprise he found her lips responsive, but he had neither the time nor
inclination to carry the emotion any further.
"So long, Carolyn," he chuckled. "Some of this has been a lot of fun."
He finished donning the space-suit and then with a careless wave of
his hand he went down the stairs. She was not looking at him, but at
the ruined microphone and the raw cord-ends, and the radio equipment
far out of her reach. Panic showed in her face and it gave her some
strength, but not enough to fight the four gravities that held her flat.
Then as Farradyne lost sight of her, his jaunty self-confidence faded.
Up until not too long ago he had been complimenting himself on being
able to find out more about the hellflower operation than the Sandmen.
Now he knew the hellflower gang had been using him in a more efficient
manner than Clevis and the Solar Anti-Narcotics Department. It became
obvious to Farradyne that fighting a gang of cut-throats and fighting
an enemy race of intelligent people were about as different as he
really was from the brilliant operator he imagined himself to be.
It also required that he change his plans for escape. He knew that he
could flee the big ship and had a fine chance of being picked up by a
Space Guard scooter as soon as he could get within calling distance of
Luna.
But the chances were high that the hellflower people would have their
entire undercover outfit alerted and at the first touch of radio call
they would be swarming the neighborhood to pick him up. He would call
and several ships would answer; there would be a lot of calling back
and forth with the result that some "commercial spaceliner" would pick
him up, reporting the incident to the Space Guard, who would not even
take off from the station on Luna. Then Farradyne would be delivered
right back to the place he was leaving now.
He paused by the spacelock and cracked the big portal, and stood there
eyeing the huge starship, a tiny dot in the distance below, visible
only because its reaction flare limned the ship, making an annular
object against the cold twinkling stars. He kept the spacelock open
long enough to make it look like a real escape to Carolyn, who would be
watching the indicator lamp and marking the time.
Then he closed the spacelock and went down and down in the Lancaster
until he found the lowermost inspection cubby. He crawled in and
closed the hatch behind him. He settled down to wait with about the
same amount of wondering concern as the school boy summoned to the
principal's office without being told why.
Even the small amount of evidence that he now could use had been given
to him as bait to catch the one man who would be willing to listen to
him. He groaned and swore aloud and the sound of his voice echoed and
reechoed within the confines of his helmet.
Time creaked past and the Lancaster turned and curved according
to the punchings on the autopilot tape. Farradyne had only one
prayer--that the enemy would not get tired of the chase and fire a
missile that would end the whole game with a wave of intolerable heat
and indescribably bright light. Only Carolyn's presence aboard might
prevent that until the last moment.
Then the hour-period ended with the Lancaster pointing up and a
quartering course from Terra and Sol and a long, long way from the
point of supposed escape. Not long after that Farradyne felt the clink
of the magnetic grapples.
He tensed again. Would they fine-comb the Lancaster? Or would the
inevitable question and answer session that must ensue, once they found
Carolyn alone, convince them that he had abandoned ship? Would they
take her off and blast the Lanc' or would they deem it of value and
keep it?
His mind went on and on--how good was the radar? How alert was their
radar operator? Were both good enough to state unequivocally that there
had been no minute object leaving the ship on a tangential course, or
would there have been the usual clutter of noise and interference and
lack of anticipation so that someone could assume that he had left the
ship? Someone was going to get chewed for it in any case. Then assuming
that the enemy considered the ship valuable, where would they take it
and what would they do with it?
Far from feeling gratified at his maneuver, Farradyne was only
satisfied to be alive and temporarily out of the hands of the enemy.
What happened from here on in must be played by ear against an unknown
score for three voices.
The drive of the Lancaster dropped from four gravities to about one,
and Farradyne could hear, dimly, the clumpings of heavy feet coming in
through the rooms above him. Then the drive diminished again, remaining
at about a quarter-gravity or maybe less, and there were sounds of feet
above his head. He tensed and he tasted the acid in his mouth; he found
his heavy automatic and clutched it clumsily in the heavy space-glove.
Capture might be preferable to death, except that Farradyne was fairly
well convinced that the enemy could not permit him to stay alive
with what he knew about them, even though it was precious little and
unsupported.
The cubby he was hiding in was angularly shaped; to one side was
space beyond the hull-plates. Inside was the water-jacket that cooled
the throat of the reaction motor. Farradyne moved quietly around the
central pillar until he was on the opposite side from the inspection
hatch and settled down again.
On the plates above his head there were footsteps and the scraping of
something heavy being hauled across the deck.
He heard the sound of triple-tongued voices barking musical and
discordant sounds, distorted and muffled by the deck and the helmet
he wore. One fiddled with the inspection hatch and Farradyne found
the scuttlebutt and valved the air out into space knowing the enemy
would have a hard time cracking the hatch against the pressure of
one atmosphere. They gave up after a moment; then came the sound of
drilling on the deckplates above him. A cloud of whitish vapor spurted
downward and the sound of alien voices rose sharply as the drill came
through. Three more spurts of escaping air blasted downward and skirred
around the room to go in a fading draw toward the scuttlebutt.
Plugs filled the four holes and Farradyne turned his head torch on
them. They were heavy self-tapping bolts being turned in from above.
The maneuver was repeated three times, ninety degrees apart. Then there
was a softer sound of scraping and gradually the clumping of feet and
the sound of men at work faded away.
Farradyne took a deep breath and realized that his skin was itching
from the cold perspiration of fear that bathed him. The taste in his
mouth was brackish and his heart was pounding, his breath shallow and
rapid. He opened his mouth to gasp and discovered that he had been
clenching his teeth so hard that his jaw ached and his molars hurt.
He closed the scuttlebutt, but did not valve any air into his hiding
place. He put the top of his helmet against the deckplate above him and
listened. Far above he could hear them, still at work but they were
going higher and higher in the ship. He relaxed, waiting....
Three more hours passed, as nerve-wracking a three hours as Farradyne
had ever spent. Then, with absolutely no warning the drive went off
completely. He floated from the deck and scrabbled around to grab a
stanchion. He held on, finally getting his magnetic shoes against a
girder where they held him at an odd angle.
The drive went on to a full one gravity and hurled Farradyne flat
against the bottom of the cubby, wrenching his ankles slightly. The
drive went off again, on and finally off. This time it stayed off.
Floating free, with only his feet for mooring, was like resting in
a tub of body-temperature water, and as the lulling muscle-freeing
sensation went on and on, Farradyne dozed. From the doze, which was
fitful for quite some time, he dropped off into a deep slumber.
16
Farradyne awoke to the pressure of about one gravity and he consulted
his watch. Either fourteen hours had passed, or thirty-eight, but he
could not believe the latter. A full clock-around was hardly possible
for Farradyne, even when he was dead tired, so one clock-around plus
fourteen hours was unthinkable.
He put his slumber at fourteen hours and then set his mind on other,
more important things.
The ship was silent. His suit hung from him limply, indicating that air
had seeped into the cubby again. He tried the scuttlebutt but no hiss
of air came. The Lancaster was a-planet.
It might be Terra, Venus or Pluto according to the pull of gravity,
but Farradyne did not think it likely to be any one of the three. He
suspected that whatever the gizmo was the enemy had installed on the
deck above him, it had something to do with transcending the limiting
velocity of light. He was probably grounded on enemy soil ... somewhere.
For a moment his mind grappled with the problem of interstellar travel
and lost the fight. It was possible, proven by the starship of the
aliens. But to come aboard with a gadget under one arm and install it,
like putting in a radio set, seemed entirely too simple. On the other
hand, Farradyne was sufficiently aware of basic physics to understand
that anything that could be used to create a condition where gross
matter could exceed the velocity of light would be something that did
not have to perform in conjunction with a matter-operated reaction
motor. He remembered, dimly, some fanciful theories written by some of
the white-tower boys in one of the big universities. These had been
experiments in field-theory and group-theory which had indicated that
under certain conditions, some rather minute spherical volumes of space
could be made to misbehave.
The difference was that with the physicists and their operations, a
vast room full of gear had been used to make a five millimeter sphere,
and the contrast was marked.
The meat of this matter was that the gizmo that made it possible
to travel faster than light must be some sort of field-generator,
and such a field-generator might well be packaged in small form for
installation. Whatever the science and whatever the location, Farradyne
could not hope to learn anything penned up here.
Again he listened. The ship was silent as the proverbial grave. He
cracked the inspection hatch and peered out. It was dark as the grave,
too.
Boldly he opened the hatch and stepped out. Under the light of his
headlamp, Farradyne inspected four rectangular metal boxes, painted a
nondescript gray. Cables led from one to another, terminating in white
metal connectors. The boxes were bolted to the deck by the self-tapping
bolts that had come through his ceiling.
From one of the boxes ran a cable that led to a wall-connector.
Like all other Solarian spacecraft, the Lancaster was well supplied
with a network of cables running up and down the length of the ship to
serve as test connections and spares for this or that equipment. This
made it possible to install some bit of gear for pleasure, comfort or
added maneuvering without having to tear half the ship apart to run the
necessary wiring.
The enemy had re-connected their multi-line cable to one of the
standard Terran connectors and plugged the cable into the Lancaster's
cable-plate.
Farradyne could see nothing about the metal boxes that would tell
him anything, so he left them and went aloft, cautiously. He doffed
the space-suit at the next level and hung it in a suit locker, and
continued to walk up the stairway that would lead him to the spacelock
and the salon.
Out of one porthole he could see the spaceport. It was broad and dark
except for a bouquet of searchlights that drilled into the sky around
the rim, a wash of floodlamps that surrounded one of the vast starships
many miles distant, and the far-off blur of bright, red light that
probably read "Spaceman's Bar" in whatever the natives used for a
printed language.
He left the viewport and went higher in his ship until he came to
the salon. He peered into it from floor level, but it was dark and
untenanted. The spacelock was open and Farradyne looked out of the
large round opening across the field to another starship standing a few
hundred yards from the Lancaster. The other ship was just as dark as
his, except for one small porthole that gleamed like a headlight in the
darkness.
The problem of where he was called him to the control room.
He looked into the sky, hunting for familiar constellations. The
Pleiades were there, but warped quite a bit and Farradyne found
that, while he knew they were distorted as an aggregation of stellar
positions, he could not remember their proper relationship. Orion was
visible, but the hero had hiked his belt up after a swing of his sword
at the mythical enemy. The Great Bear was sitting on his haunches
instead of prowling and the smaller Bear had lost his front feet.
Cassiopeia had gained some weight, enough to squash her throne and
Sirius no longer blazed in Canis Major. Procyon had taken off for parts
unknown, while several other bright stars dotted the skies in places
where no stars had been on Terra. It was likely that some of these were
merely displaced stars, but no one could tell Sirius from anything else
without a set of astronomical instruments and a few years of study
unless he knew which way Sirius was from this position.
Coldly and calmly Farradyne scanned the skies. Providing they had not
travelled more than forty or fifty light years, the constellations
before and behind the direct line of flight should be reasonably
undistorted, except for those stars that would have been bypassed en
route. This would only add a star or two to a constellation behind and
subtract the same from a constellation dead ahead. The ones to the side
of the line of flight would be misshapen and warped.
It would have been easier if he could have viewed the entire sky,
but he had to be content with one hemisphere. If he could find an
undistorted constellation with a few stars missing he had come in that
direction and, conversely, if there were stars added, he had gone away
from it past some of the stars between Sol and this enemy system.
He tried to recall visits to the big stellartarium in New York where
the lecturer displayed the skies as seen from various well known stars
that were within half a hundred light years of Sol. Certain sky-marks
and their displacement would be very helpful, if he could remember
them. But he found that he had not been as visually attentive as he
might have been, or that he had seen and been entertained and then
discarded the data as interesting but useless in a scientific culture
that firmly believed in the limiting velocity of light.
Finally he gave up hoping to establish his whereabouts by visual
inspection. He found a small pad of paper and began to make layouts of
the familiar constellations as he saw them. Someone among the planets
of Sol would be able to measure the angles and changes and come up with
the right answer within a few light years, and stars were sufficiently
separated so that the chances were good for a reasonable identification.
He put a dozen small pages in his pocket and then took his first look
at the control room. He could see nothing changed at first, but then he
found a small auxiliary panel beside the pilot's seat which contained a
bar-topped toggle switch and three pilot lamps that were different in
appearance from the rest of the Lancaster's standard equipment.
He felt an urge to try the toggle, but fought it down. It was too much
like playing with toy building blocks made of sub-critical masses of
plutonium, and Farradyne wanted to stay alive long enough to watch
the downfall of the enemy, not participate in the explosion. Curbing
his human curiosity to fiddle with strange gadgets, Farradyne turned
away from the board and went to the cupboard where he took out his
binoculars.
He was astonished to find out how far away the starship really was, and
how big it was when it leaped into closer view in the glasses. It was
still as dark as an untenanted building except for that one lighted
porthole, but the angle into the cabin beyond was too steep. Farradyne
could see nothing more than the corner between the opposite wall and
the ceiling. He toyed with the idea of trying to lift himself to the
top of the dome, but gave it up because he realized, once he removed
the binoculars from his eyes, that the additional few feet of height
would not change the distant angle enough to make it worth his while.
The question of what to do next perplexed him. Obviously there was no
answer. There could be no plan. He would have to play it by ear again,
with the other guy calling the moves. He grunted unhappily; he could
not even smoke because he feared to show even the smallest light. But--
Farradyne went down to his galley and opened a can of mixed space
rations which he shovelled in cold. It filled him adequately but not
tastily and he realized that the best of fine food would have been
stowed away in a frenzy of nervous listening for the inevitable sounds
of the enemy's return. With haste, Farradyne cleaned up the evidence of
his presence, thinking how ridiculous it was to be stealing from his
own spacecraft.
He was finishing up this job when the faint glint of a distant flash
of light caught his eye. He hurried to the porthole from which the
glint had come, and peered out. A large caravan of heavy trucks was
snaking around the corner of a distant building and turning onto the
spacefield. Their headlamps cut forward like scythes of light, cutting
a brilliant path toward the Lancaster.
Farradyne did not deem it wise to sit this out. They might have been
heading for the other side of the field, but if they weren't he was
trapped. He went aloft to the salon and scuttered down the landing
ramp, around the back side of the poised spacer and away from the
direction of the trucks, running in the shadow cast by the Lancaster.
Five or six hundred yards away was another spacer, and it was
completely dark. Farradyne scurried around the widespread tail fins of
the monster and stood there, peering at the caravan from between the
angle made by the tail fin and the in-curving body of the spacecraft.
The trucks came around the Lancaster, surrounded it in a circle, and
then a blaze of lights came, lighting the Terran ship from dome to
reaction funnel. Ladders were sent aloft and a huge crane lifted. The
calls of workers and the directions of their superintendent came to
Farradyne clearly. He wondered what they were doing and saying; except
for the three-toned voices that added an audible complement of women
and children to the gang, it sounded like any work party on earth
yammering in a strange tongue.
He watched for an hour, and then he saw that the distant sky was
beginning to show a very faint glow of gray. Sunrise--or perhaps a
false sunrise, he could not tell.
He scuttled like a human spider away from the direction of the work
party until its flood lights were a distant miniature stage setting.
He wound in and among silent, dark spacecraft, avoiding those with
lights even though he had to detour wide for the sake of this safety.
Eventually he came to the far side of the spaceport.
He cased the place warily from behind the fin of a spacer, looking at
the dark, silent buildings and wondering if this gang of aliens had
ever heard of night watchmen. He did not trust the quiet darkness of
the apparently uninhabited spaceport because he was suspicious and he
knew that other people were as suspicious as he was. He was glad that
he did not barge in brashly, for along about the first glimmers of real
graying sky, a man came out from between two of the buildings waving a
searchlight. He sauntered along in front of the nearest building and
disappeared between it and the next.
Farradyne skipped across the space and went into the gangway the
watchman had just come out of. He walked warily through and came to
a high wire fence. Keeping to the building side of the clearance-way
between fence and building, Farradyne skulked along in the direction
opposite to that taken by the watchman.
He needed a minimum of two items: A set of Planet X clothing and a way
out of this rattrap.
He found the way out a few minutes later.
A dim striking of a bell alarmed him until he realized that it was
tolling, rather than clamoring an alarm. He followed the tolling for
seventeen bongs and came upon a small sentry house perched beside an
open gate. As the tolling stopped, the man in the house stretched,
yawned and got up, picking up a searchlight. He stepped outside and
looked around in a bored manner.
The watchman took one look at the open gate some ten feet from his
position and shrugged. He turned his back on it and disappeared between
a couple of buildings not far from Farradyne's place.
Farradyne grinned. Obviously it had been so long ago since any trouble
had been this way that the guard-system had become lax. Farradyne
praised laziness and complacency highly as he sped across the open
space on silent feet and passed the gate on his way to the outside.
Dawn was breaking and the chill of the morning nipped at him. He had
broken free, but it was just as dangerous for him to remain in front of
the open gate as it might have been for him to be roaming around the
spaceport in the full light of day. He turned to the right and started
to walk along the road toward a group of small buildings a few hundred
yards from the spaceport.
The second item Farradyne needed came later. He had sauntered along
several deserted streets in the gray of dawn and down a couple of
alleys and through a vacant lot or two until he was quite some distance
from the spaceport. Here, in a dimly lighted district Farradyne met
his Planet X clothing.
The stranger did not have a chance. He had been drinking or sniffing
whatever the enemy used for celebration and he had used too much.
Farradyne's hard fist came out of somewhere and the stranger went down
like a log, silently. Farradyne dragged him into an alley and stripped
him to the skin.
His own clothing Farradyne stuffed in a trash barrel, pushing the
bundle down below the rest of the rubbish in the hope that the barrel
would be collected by a couple of hard-working and uncurious men who
would never note the alien cut to the cloth.
He left the fellow naked to suffer both a hangover and a lot of
embarrassment.
Then in the pleasantly bright dawn, Farradyne walked boldly down the
city street jingling a bunch of native coins in the side pocket of
his costume and feeling just a trifle silly, like an introvert at a
fancy-dress ball. The trousers were striped gaudily and the loose
jacket hugged his waist a bit on the too-tight side. There was a widish
hat and a pair of shoes that could have been put on either foot. He
looked like a character out of an old-time musical comedy and he hoped
that his costume was not the kind worn by Planet X-ians as formal
evening wear because then he would look silly to them wandering around
in the morning light like a man caught far from home at six ack-emma in
a tuxedo.
Eventually he passed a shop window and saw other garb like the junk he
was wearing and he felt better.
He had every faith in the belief that people are disciplined against
striking up an acquaintance with a total stranger, and so he turned
into what was obviously a main thoroughfare and strolled along it until
the streets began to fill with people.
17
There was no doubt about the alien quality of the city. But in its
functional qualities, it was very familiar. These, he realized, were
developments that had been found to be effective over a long time of
sheer operation; functions that would have been mechanically similar
on any planet no matter how alien, so long as its inhabitants breathed
air, ate food and perambulated. Buildings were mostly squarish blocks
cut with windows and doors; shops had broad windows for displaying
their wares and even the wares were not too exotic. Clothing stores
and gewgaw stores and food shops and now and then one that sold stuff
that was not to be identified by a stranger.
The streets and alleys and gutters and sidewalks were normal. Traffic
ran to the left, however, which gave Farradyne some trouble because
he had been used to stepping from the curb and glancing to the
right. Drivers squawked at him with their horns and swore at him
in their multi-tongued voices. Farradyne forced himself to learn
this left-handed traffic problem; he did not want to be handed a
traffic ticket, nor did he want to be asked by some policeman for an
explanation of his stupidity.
By now the sun was well above the horizon and the streets began to
teem. The air began to sing with the noise of people chattering,
greeting one another, and generally making a racket resembling a
Chinese laundry in an air-raid. He heard the clash of metal on metal
and turned to watch a couple of drivers arguing over their dented
fenders. As he walked with his head turned, Farradyne bumped into
someone and the man chittered something at him angrily. Farradyne
nodded humbly and grunted under his breath and hurried on. So did
the other man, who merely replied to Farradyne's grunt with a single
three-toned discord before veering off and away.
He had to be careful, he told himself; he had found this city so
closely resembling a city of his own system that he had become
careless. He knew by now that if he conducted himself without
attracting attention and if he walked without cringing, no one would
think to stop him for questioning.
What had Carolyn said? Something about their springing from the same
basic stock some fifty thousand years ago? Well, anyway, these were
of the same family of curious apes who were gregarious enough to band
together and still individualistic enough to resent any intrusion upon
privacy. There would most certainly be three-toned hell to pay if he
opened his own trap, but so long as he kept it shut, they had no way of
telling him from any of their own kind.
And so he walked among them for hours, until the crowd thinned and the
traffic became less boisterous and frantic and the city settled down to
the quieter routine.
Farradyne found it hard to place this cosmopolitan culture in the same
niche with the society that appeared to be systematically undermining
the Solarian civilization. It was quite similar to the paradox he had
found in the Niles family. It was as though murder was an honorable
enterprise and that the dope-sales were listed on the daily stock
exchange under the commodities section.
Farradyne had expected to find some monstrous ugliness here. A police
or slave state would not have surprised him; it was such a culture that
usually fostered villainy. Instead he found a city much like his own
and it was hard for Farradyne to shake off the feeling that the only
misunderstanding between them was the age-old barrier of tongue.
Eventually he came upon an ornately carved building that stood with the
doors open. People were sauntering in and out with no obvious barrier,
and so Farradyne followed one group at a little distance and went into
the building.
It could have been any museum on Terra, for the lifeforms displayed
were as bizarre as any of the stranger bits of art work on the earth
or other of Sol's planets. He came upon a quiet hallway that had a
non-scale model of the solar system; it was a working orrery that told
Farradyne nothing other than that this system had eleven planets and
a batch of satellites. None of the planets had rings like Saturn. He
looked for something that could identify the parent sun for him, but he
found nothing familiar about any of the displays, except one.
There was a small model of Sol and its planets on a pedestal, and while
the sight was familiar, the lettering below the display was not. If the
legend said anything about distance and direction, it was not only in
the alien's terms, but in the alien's written language.
To find out where in the sky he was, Farradyne needed a fast course in
Planet X-ian language, and then a six months' concentrated course in
uranography. He began to understand that the matter of being lost is
only a dislocation of your own frame of reference. Cities do not have
large signs around the streets saying "This is Chicago" because any man
in his right senses knows that he is not in Detroit, and if he does
not, there are better places for him than either city.
He shunned the opportunity of visiting the enemy planetarium. Having
some lecturer explain the heavens as seen from Planet X in a trio-voice
would get him nowhere.
He left the museum and began to trudge back toward the spaceport. He
was hungry again, and the morning and early fore-afternoon had been
frustrating, even though it had been enlightening to find that the
aliens lived and breathed and enjoyed themselves like people instead of
the cold inhuman monsters he had expected.
Again Farradyne watched his fellows carefully. It seemed that one
medium slug would buy him a wad of paper that could be nothing other
than the afternoon news, after which he would get two smaller slugs in
change. He strode to the newsstand with a what-the-hell feeling and
tossed down one of the medium slugs. He scooped up one of the papers
and two of the smaller slugs and walked away without saying a word. The
newsman watched the transaction without turning an eye. Then Farradyne
folded the paper through the middle and tucked it under his arm and
sauntered along like the absent-minded professor until he found a
quick-grab joint that opened on the sidewalk.
He stood at the counter scanning the wall-menu as though he knew what
it said until the waitress sounded off at him. He looked down at
her with a frown of irritation, and then waved two fingers at a hot
plate full of flat square things floating in an oily sea of juice. He
unfolded his paper and immersed himself in a page while the waitress
scooped two of the flat things from the plate and slid them between
folds of something like a bun. She shoved them beneath the lower edge
of Farradyne's paper on a flat plate and stood there mewing at him like
a trio of alley cats.
Acting in an absent manner Farradyne took two of the larger slugs
from his pocket and dropped them on the bar. The waitress took one,
deposited it in a register with a shrug, as if she had seen oddly
absorbed characters before, and returned with three of the smaller
slugs which she piled on the bar beside Farradyne's remaining coin.
He munched his greasy God-knows-whats and while he mentally complained
about the flavor and the greasiness, he was forced to admit that they
were more satisfying than his earlier cold can of mixed space rations.
Then he folded his paper (wondering whether he had been absorbed
in a lonely hearts column, the local stock market, or a nice lurid
sex-slaying) and sauntered off toward the spaceport. He made it in
easy steps, angling this way and that and wandering like Haroun al
Raschid, but feeling more like that other fabled Arabian who was forced
to remain in the body of a stork because his bird's mouth could not
pronounce the magic word in the proper language. No one paid him any
attention.
The sum and substance of his adventure was the feeling that a hyena can
walk through a monkey cage so long as the hyena has enough sense to
wear monkey clothing and keep his big bazoo shut, and an opinion that
it was a damned shame that such nice-appearing folks could be such lice.
By the time Farradyne returned to the vicinity of the spaceport it was
getting along toward late afternoon. It was a long day on Planet X
and if Farradyne's judgment of time were anything worth mention, the
day had still some hours to go until the real darkness came. He had
no watch. A watch would have come in handy for time estimating even
though there stood an excellent probability that the length of the day
did not match anything like the Terran standard of time. He had dumped
his wrist watch along with his own clothing because it was obviously
alien; the watch he wore was his victim's but it was calibrated in
Planet X time and Farradyne had not had a chance to compare times, nor
to sit quietly and observe the relative motions of the several hands
around the dial.
He was too early, but he had no other place to go. He could see across
the spaceport to the Lancaster, where the cranes still poised high and
the work went on, but still he had no more urge to return to the city.
Farradyne observed the entry of others carefully, and discovered that
there were a couple of smaller ships taking on passengers, and that a
number of people were coming along to watch them off. It looked like
the operations on the average civilian spaceport, where people were
not herded around nor treated with suspicion. It caused Farradyne to
think that obviously the people of Planet X were all in accord on the
plans of their undercover attack on Sol. Farradyne smiled sourly, on
the planets of Sol any such venture would have been greeted with every
shade of reaction from eager applause to outright hostility.
Farradyne was more than willing to take advantage of their obvious
self-confidence or lack of concern over the possibility of sabotage,
espionage, or enemy action. He was fitting himself unobtrusively into a
group of people who were entering the main gate of the spaceport when
he heard the raucous toot of an automobile horn.
Like all the rest, Farradyne turned to look. An official looking
limousine was slowly coming up that broad drive. In it were driver,
three guards, and--
"Norma Hannon!" he said with astonishment.
Then Farradyne felt the cold chill of fear crawl down his spine because
he knew that he had made a hideous mistake. He turned away slowly,
hoping that the others were turning as slowly to go about their own
business. He started toward the spaceport, only to find a uniformed
guard barring his way.
The guard chimed at him tersely.
Farradyne took his guts firmly and eyed the guard with a contempt that
he did not feel. "Talk Terran," he snapped.
The guard blinked and chimed some more, less tersely but no less
demandingly.
"Talk Terran," snapped Farradyne firmly. "Or I don't hear you. I know
too many who've let down too often and relaxed into their own tongue.
They aren't alive."
"I don't speak Terran very well."
"Well, damn it, learn it!" roared Farradyne. "You'll be needing it soon
enough. Now, what did you have to say to me?"
"You heard me, but I'd rather--"
Farradyne relaxed with a grin. "No, I didn't. You could impugn my
wife's virtue and I wouldn't listen to you. So now let's start over
again."
"I was going to ask--"
"No," said Farradyne shortly. "Not that way. I said 'start' and I meant
that we'd start _thinking_ in Terran, like I've learned to do.
Now, you addressed me properly and I said, 'Talk Terran!'"
"Oh. Er, look, you're not going to make me repeat it?"
"Why not?"
"I'd feel like a fool. After all, a mistake is a mistake, isn't it? I
could hardly know that you were one of the Terra group, could I? After
all, you're not dressed in Terran clothing."
Farradyne saw a glimmer of doubt in the guard's face; Farradyne should
have been in Terran clothing if his intention was to stay as Terran
as possible until the bitter end. He merely smiled, thinking fast.
He said, "Don't want to attract any more attention here than I do on
Terra. Frankly, I'm masquerading here. See?"
"I guess you're right. You can speak to your own group, but others can
see you. Tell me, sir, what is it like? On the planets of Sol?"
"Pleasant enough."
"Is that so? I've heard they were rich. But the people? Are they as bad
as I've heard?"
"Worse," said Farradyne, thinking that propaganda was as universal as
anything could be. He began to itch. How could he break this off before
he really did give himself away? The cold sweat that had been running
down his spine at the time of the guard's first hail, which had dried
in the exultation of knowing that he had succeeded in turning the
guard's suspicion away, now started to itch again as another sweat came
out to wet the dried salt.
Farradyne was saved the trouble. The car tooted for attention again and
Farradyne turned to see it coming back from the spaceport.
"There goes the other one," said the guard, nodding at the car. It
passed them and Farradyne saw, with less astonishment this time, that
the new one was Howard Clevis.
"Sure does," chuckled Farradyne. "And now so do I."
"You've plenty of time before they hop off for the colony. But go on,
and good luck! I'll remember what you said about thinking in Terran."
Farradyne waved and went into the spaceport. He was walking on wobbly
legs, because he did not know whether the guard would suddenly begin
to suspect him and let fly. But as he passed beyond range around the
fantail of a big spacer he relaxed once more.
Farradyne walked slowly out across the field, feeling let down. He had
learned nothing from the day's wandering, but while he dawdled all over
town, Norma Hannon and Howard Clevis had been within a shout of his
Lancaster. Not that he could have done anything, but just being able to
talk it over might have brought something out of meeting up with them.
Night was slow in coming, but Farradyne loafed along on his mile and a
half walk through the tails of the parked spacecraft until darkness was
well on its way.
Two things he noted:
The work-crew around the Lancaster were polishing off the last bits
and some of the trucks were folding down their ladders and preparing
to take off for home. The other item was the position of the lonely
lighted porthole in the big starship. It had changed. To Farradyne this
meant only one thing. Clevis had been in one stateroom from early that
morning or late last night, but Norma had been missing. Now Norma was
back to her own stateroom and Clevis was off, possibly being questioned.
Could he--should he--? Questions raced through his mind. And if he did,
would Norma be able to tell him anything? He had his own plans; to hide
back in his Lancaster and wait out developments. At least long enough
to throw a hard hammerlock on whatever pilot came to drive the Lanc'
and twist information out of him.
Norma, he thought then, might know one thing: Their location. It would
be a help to know. For if push came to shove, Farradyne was going to
enter the Lancaster and take her up and then he was going to experiment
with that auxiliary drive. He might die, but he was going to try the
thing as soon as he knew that he could never find out without taking
the long gamble.
One of the work trucks made up his mind for him. It turned from the
Lancaster and its headlamps cut a swath across the field, swinging
toward Farradyne. It took Farradyne less than the proverbial half
a jiffy to come to the conclusion that bamboozling a guard at the
gate was one thing, but to be found slinking around either near the
Lancaster or the big starship was something else again.
He avoided the lights of the truck by scooting up the landing ramp of
the starship and into the spacelock. It occurred to Farradyne as he
went that the lack of people, including guards, out in this region of
the spacefield was in a way its own protection. Any distant watcher
seeing a figure out here would know automatically that the person was
an intruder; perhaps the only reason Farradyne had not been hailed down
was due to the known presence of workmen.
Farradyne lay with his chin on the sill of the spacelock and peered
out as the truck went by. It would be some time before they were all
finished, he concluded, and so he decided to kill the time in action.
Feeling his way along the dark corridors, Farradyne made his way aloft,
up the stairways and around the circular floors until he came upon
the one door with a streak of light coming underneath it. The light
helped him see; the door was secured with a single bolt of the sliding
variety, easy to open from the outside but impossible to move from
within.
Farradyne slid the bolt and pushed open the door.
Norma was standing inside, poised defiantly with her hands on her hips,
waiting. For a moment she did not recognize him, then her face twisted
and said, "Well! If it isn't our interstellar man-about-space, Charles
Farradyne!"
18
"Now see here," he said shortly, "Clevis must have told you about me."
"I knew that you and Clevis had something cooked up together the first
time I saw him come into the Lancaster without a blazing gun in each
hand," she said sourly.
"Well, then you ought to know that I'm--"
"You're a damned idiot, Farradyne! You bumbling fool!"
"But look, I'm here--"
"Where?"
"I was hiding in the inspection hatch. I couldn't see out. Don't you
know where we are?"
"They didn't think I'd find it necessary to know," she replied
bitingly. "You fancy pants!"
Farradyne swore in his throat. "Now I'll ask you whose side you're on,"
he snapped. "I came here to--"
"Whose side I'm on?" she laughed harshly. "Whose side are _you_
on, Farradyne? I hope you're on their side; you're bound to louse them
up sooner or later."
"Look, Norma--"
"So you come bubbling home with the bait in your mouth, unable to feel
the hook, and hand it to Howard to get caught on. Go back where you got
that monkey costume and die."
"Norma, answer me one thing. Who was Frank Hannon?"
"Frank? Frank was Howard's right hand undercover man, Farradyne. He
had the goods on a man whose name no one knows; he didn't say because
he didn't have the chance. He had it all with him when you dumped the
Semiramide."
Farradyne eyed her coldly. "There's one thing you've got to admit," he
said. "That tale of my three-tongued people was no lotus-dream."
Her silence was as good as a grudging affirmation.
"So part of the pattern is clearing up," he went on. "But if Clevis
found me because I'd had four rotten years mucking toadstools on Venus,
I'm not above wondering if this was not part of some master plan. Could
someone have wrecked the Semiramide and saved me to act someday as bait
for Clevis?"
"Isn't that just a bit far-fetched?"
"Maybe and maybe not. Just think. We're not merely fighting an
apparently well-integrated mob of dope-runners. We're fighting a
blind battle against a whole culture that is calmly and maliciously
undermining the moral fiber of the whole race so they can move in and
take over with little or no opposition. Doesn't that make sense? Such a
program has plans that extend for years; I may be only one small angle,
although mine happens to be the angle that worked. Don't tell me you
expect warfare to be run like a football game, complete with referees
and penalties for kneeing a fallen contestant in the kidneys."
Norma considered it a moment. "I suppose it does make sense. Any formal
declaration of war is an openly expressed intention of committing
suicide. But you explain yourself if you can."
Farradyne shrugged. "Maybe for the first time I out-guessed them," he
said hopefully. He went on to explain how he had done it in a few quick
sentences. "Then," he finished, "the big ship didn't even try to find
me--the little man that didn't escape. I also doubt that they knew
where I was, or they'd not have let me run free all over town." He went
on and finished the tale of his peregrinations.
"We saw them catch the Lancaster," she said. "We wondered just why you
suddenly went dead at the stick after giving them such a chase. Well, I
guess that's it. I'll go on the assumption that you aren't a hellflower
devil."
"Thanks," he said bitterly. "And, why the sudden change?"
"I've heard this three-toned language that everybody was so scornful
about. I've heard a lot of it. I know that a full-scale organization
such as this bunch can and will pull some rather complicated capers,
so I am no longer sure that it was your inept handling of a spacecraft
that caused the death of my brother. He was on someone's trail and
I've assumed it was you. Maybe it wasn't. And if it wasn't then the
Semiramide affair was not even an accident on your part. So, damn you,
I can't hate you any more."
"You can't hate me?"
"Not unless you turn out to be one of this outfit. And for the life of
me I can't see just what you hope to learn from me that I didn't spill
during their questionings."
"Did they--" he let the rest of the sentence hang because he didn't
know just how to express it.
"They know everything I know," she said. "I've been filled to the
gills with something they shot out of a needle that made me as happily
loquacious as a babbling marmoset."
"Did they explain why they brought you back here? It seems to me they'd
imprison you."
"That's for later. They're now comparing my tale with Howard's and
after they get done comparing notes they'll bring Howard back and we'll
take a little jaunt to what they call their 'Detention Planet' where
I'll meet a certain number of other Solarians who have gotten a bit
too sharp for their liking. It's in another stellar system, I believe,
completely safe and far from home and as a last lever in this war
they'll hold the lives of a few hundred thousand men and women over the
heads of Terra."