"No good. Better we didn't mention it at all. Leave it as it is."
Farradyne whispered, "They're a canny bunch. Talk the language always,
act the part always, live the life always; and cut your enemy short
when he's looking for something alien."
Another pair of feet came up the landing ramp, and Carolyn said, almost
at the same time. "It's on. How's she working?"
"Fine. We're finished. Coming up."
"I want to see."
"Okay, so you come down and see. We're coming up and getting started."
"Pincered!" said Farradyne to Norma.
He drew her to the cargo hold and handed her down the service ladder.
He followed, closing the door behind him and then, before he snapped
out the lights, he reached up and removed one of them, saying, "I
don't think we'll have an inspection, but if we do, having one lamp
missing will cast a shadow we can stand in. This is a dimly lit joint
at best." He waved at the shadow caused by the empty socket and then
snapped the lamp off.
Their weight upon the cushion of flowers was released[1] and sat with
their feet pulled up beneath them, not daring to say a word. Her
breathing, and the faint pressure of her shoulder against his told him
of her presence beside him.
[Footnote 1: Transcriber's Note: Possible printer error. This line is
repeated on the next page that seems to be more appropriate to the
story.]
They waited in the dark silence, listening, and occasionally tensing
instinctively when someone clumped past the wall outside or seemed to
come near the cargo hatch above their heads. There were voices and
calls and running feet from time to time, and then the humming sound of
the conveyor-belt.
The hatch above was opened wide but the lights were not put on.
And then from the end of the loose-cargo conveyor came a tumbling
shower of hellblossoms. They landed on the floor in a conical heap and
kept coming until both Farradyne and Norma were shoulder deep in them.
The air filled with the thick, syrupy perfume. Farradyne felt a slight
spell of dizziness from the heady odor and then wondered with horrified
interest just what effect this completely unpredictable overdose of
dope would do to the woman.
The shower of hellflowers came on and on, and Farradyne was forced to
stand because of their depth. Still they came and he found himself
swimming off his depth in them; it reminded him of treading in a
haymow. The rain of blossoms ceased as the hold filled and the lights
went on briefly for an inspection.
Farradyne was propped neck deep, his head barely below the ceiling and
he felt quite safe from detection unless the inspectors put their heads
down into the hatch to peer around the edges of the cylindrical hold.
He looked at Norma. She had scrabbled up and a-top the pile and was
lying on her back with her arms thrown over her head. Her eyes were
closed, but as she drew in a deep breath, the lids went half-up and she
looked over at Farradyne and smiled ecstatically.
The hatch slammed down, and she said huskily, "Such nice friends you
have, Charles."
He wanted to ask her if she didn't find this friendship a bit
overpowering, but instead he said, "They're certainly no friends of
mine."
"Nor mine. But this is ..." and her voice trailed away to a whisper
that he could not catch.
Pressure came upsurging and Farradyne felt that he did not have to
explain that the Lancaster was on its way to space and perhaps back
toward home. In the midst of the take-off pressure she found his hand
and drew it toward her, she snuggled her face against his palm. Her
free hand came over and touched his cheek, then ran back around his
head. She pulled him forward until she could rest her head against his
shoulder with her forehead against his face.
Her fingers ran through his hair and pressed his face to hers. He tried
to free himself, but he could not escape without being rough about
it and he believed that any bold move to elude her would bring forth
either pleas or bitter demands loud enough to bring the enemy on the
run. He struggled a bit, his hands closed on either side of her waist
but instead of moving away, her body came forward against his.
Then, abruptly, the pressure of the drive went off and they floated
free.
Their weight upon the cushion of flowers was released and the
springiness of the hellblossoms thrust them up, hard, hurling them
against the ceiling.
Norma's hands were dragged free of his head and, in clutching at him
frantically, her fingernails raked his cheek. The pressure he held
against her waist thrust her away as soon as she lost her leverage. Her
head hit the ceiling with a dull thunk, followed by the soft sound of
her body hitting flat. A sigh came from her lips, but it was the sigh
of an unconscious person.
The hold was filled with hellflowers floating free and spread apart by
the tiny pressure of the ends of their leaves and petals; Farradyne
fought them away frantically, but only succeeded in digging himself
deeper in the room.
Eventually he found the service ladder and clung to it, waving himself
a breathing space by pushing the floating blossoms back.
Norma's inert hand touched him limply. Farradyne toyed with the idea
of reviving her but gave it up instantly; let her sleep it off, and
preferably alone and elsewhere in this hold. He gave the hand a push
and she floated from him in the dark, pushing through the free mass by
her heavier inertia.
The exertion had called upon his reserves and he drank in lungfuls of
air that was stickily laden with the heavy perfume. It made him dizzy
again and he fought for air, only succeeding in drawing more of the
thick scent into his system. He wondered haphazardly what the effect of
an overdose of love lotus might have on a man; the experiment had been
tried but not to this extent. So far all it did was to make him feel as
though he were being doctored with a dose of nitrous oxide.
He scrabbled up the ladder and opened the hatch cautiously. It was
as dark outside as it was inside and Farradyne pushed the hatch up
further to put his face in the clean air and take a deep breath. Then,
because he felt better, he climbed out of the hold and floated free
in the air above the hatch. He latched onto a handrail and closed the
hatch carefully with a breathed, "You like 'em, baby. You breathe 'em
until I get back!"
Then he sat in mid-air with one hand hooked in the rail and with deep
breaths of the clean air, tried to think what to do next.
19
He prowled the cargo hold level, floating along the circular corridor.
He knew it was not the safest thing to do but preferred anything to
a return to the hold. He did not stop to decide whether it was the
perfume of the lotus or the presence of the doped woman that kept him
away from his cover.
An hour passed, then two, and Farradyne was growing bolder by the
minute. He had covered the entire lower level of his Lancaster and had
stopped above his former hiding place speculating whether to hide or
not.
He decided not, and went floating upward through the ship until he
came to the stateroom level. He floated around the corridor noticing
that the little flags that indicated that the door was locked from the
inside were all down except one. One of his "guests" did not trust his
fellow travellers completely.
He floated on upstairs to the salon and almost ruined his silent flight
by trying to put on the brakes. On the divan lay a man in his clothing,
restrained by the hold-down safety strap. He was sound asleep.
Farradyne floated over, and then taking hold of the strap to keep
himself from flying free with the motions, he deepened the man's
slumber with a vicious cut of his revolver.
He floated on into the control room, where the silent and distant stars
watched. Some of them were moving down; these would be the nearby
stars, while the rest stood as immobile as he had always known them.
He would have preferred to stay and watch the effect of travelling
faster than light, for the aspect of the sky directly above was very
strange in color and in constellation. But he knew that he had started
something and he could see this odd, stellar phenomenon at some more
leisured time.
He took a roll of two-inch adhesive tape from the medicine supplies and
taped the unconscious man's wrists and ankles and then slapped a length
over the mouth that sealed up the gash along the side of the head at
the same time. Then he went down to his own quarters and opened the
door slowly.
A second man slept there, but Farradyne did not lash out with the
pistol. He holstered the gun and clipped the enemy along the side of
the jaw with a sharp chop of his hand. Tape was applied quickly and
effectively.
That made two.
He considered the situation carefully. So long as his batting average
stayed at one thousand he was in fine shape. All it had to meet was one
error and he was out of the game. His chances were not too good, but
they were helped by the fact that he was an unknown enemy among them.
This was some sort of undeclared war, but the Lancaster could hardly
have been termed a warship, since there were no space battles to fight.
The ship ran itself, there was nothing to watch, so they did what all
spacemen do, sleep. If he could catch them one by one....
He opened Stateroom One. It was empty. That put a different light on
things. Maybe this was not a fully loaded transport. Maybe it was just
like the average cargo-haul with only a couple of passengers.
He opened Stateroom Two and found it empty. That sort of proved it.
He opened Stateroom Three and found a man asleep in the bunk. The
enemy was stirring as Farradyne scanned the room, and he moved just
as Farradyne hastily launched himself across the cabin. Haste ruined
his aim so that his down-slashing hand clipped the man on the skull
instead of hitting him alongside the ear. The man grunted and swung out
blindly, hitting Farradyne and moving him up and away. Farradyne caught
the upright of the bunk, staying his free flight, levered himself
around and swung again.
The enemy parried the blow and let out a roar that sounded like three
angry locomotives tooting for the right of way. Farradyne pulled
himself down and around, then kicked out with both feet, catching
the man in the face and chest. The force drove his man deep into the
mattress, from which he rebounded to fold up over the hold-down strap.
He flopped up and down, limp, an inert mass caught between two springs.
The same force drove Farradyne out toward the open door.
His aim was still bad, his outsweeping hand caught the leading edge of
the door and he and it swung on the hinges until he came flat against
the wall behind the door. He fought his body around and came out of the
room feet first.
Catching at the handrail he stabilized his flight, then he took notice
of his surroundings, expecting the whole enemy horde to come boiling
out of their staterooms.
A door down the hall opened and a man came sailing out. He caught sight
of Farradyne and launched himself at the spaceman. Farradyne met him
with a slash of the pistol, which was parried by a block of the man's
forearm against Farradyne's wrist. It stopped the enemy's flight but
tore Farradyne's hold loose.
Farradyne recovered first, hauling himself erect just in time to let
the other man peer down the barrel of the gun. "Hold it, friend," he
snapped.
The enemy, about to kick himself forward, took a firm hold on the
handrail behind him and retracted his feet from against the wall.
"You can't get away with it, Farradyne."
"I can try, Brenner. So happy to meet you again."
Warily he listened. There were no other sounds along the corridor, only
the one he expected, and soon the little flag on the lock went in and
the door opened. Carolyn Niles came out in pajamas and coat, her eyes
blinking slightly. "What's the--" Then she gasped. "Charles!"
"Howdedo. Any more hiding in the dark, Carolyn?"
"How did you get here?"
"I walked," he said flatly. He turned to Brenner. "You stay there,
schoolmaster. I'm scared to death and a bit touchy."
Brenner shook his head. "I know you're scared. I'm scared, too. Scared
to move."
"Relax--but do it slowly. Now turn around and make it hand over hand
toward the salon. You follow the gentleman," he said to Carolyn.
Farradyne followed them both, calling to Brenner that if he tried any
tricks, Carolyn might get in the way of the shot intended for him. They
went up the stairway, one, two, three, and floated into the salon,
Farradyne making a bit of a time of it because of his full gun-hand. He
hooked his legs around the guard rail and eyed them coldly.
"Carolyn, let's see how good a job you can do on Brenner's wrists with
a chunk of this tape." He tossed the roll at her and she clutched
wildly and missed.
"Go get it!"
Carolyn performed some intricate free-flight maneuvers before she
caught the roll. Then she went to Brenner, who held his hands out
behind him while she ran tape around the wrists.
"I'd be willing to bet that's a slipshod job," said Farradyne. "But
it will probably hold until I can relax. Carolyn, coast over here and
force yourself to sit in the straight chair."
Farradyne taped her to the chair by the wrists and the ankles and took
a slight hitch in the hold-down strap. Then he added some security
to Brenner's bond and taped the man to the legs of the divan at the
ankles. With his hands behind him and the strap tight across the man's
hips, Farradyne felt that Brenner would be thoroughly immobilized.
He propped the still unconscious one up near Brenner and taped him
similarly.
Then he took time to go below and collect the third from his cabin
and bring him up. The man was struggling against the wide tape and
glaring at Farradyne over the plaster on his lips. Farradyne hurled him
backside first at the divan and followed him, to catch the man on the
rebound from the divan. He taped him as he had taped the others, then
he took a small flight to the bar, where he perched on top of it by
hooking his feet around one of the bar stools.
"Aren't we a good-looking bunch?" he chuckled. "Shall we sing?"
"Stop it, Farradyne," snapped Brenner.
Farradyne's twisted smile faded. "We'll play this game according to my
rules for awhile."
"How long do you think you'll be able--"
"Long enough. I'm running this show."
"You can't get away with it."
"You said that before. Convince me, Brenner."
"Why bother with you? I'm the one that counts."
"Cut it out," Farradyne said contemptuously. "I should think your
position would feel a bit awkward for a conqueror."
"The sooner you free us, the--"
Farradyne laughed in one loud humorless bark. "So I'm still your
prisoner?"
"In a way. You wouldn't care to die without telling what you know about
us. You'll do anything to stay alive."
"You damn well bet! And I'll do anything to learn a bit more."
"You can't make me talk."
"Want to bet? I don't think I could squeeze anything out of you by
torture, but I have a hunch you'll sing loud and long after you watch
me take Carolyn's fingernails off with long-nosed pliers and listen to
her stifled sobbing. An old-fashioned torture, but still effective."
Carolyn looked at Farradyne coldly. "Come to think of it, Charles, I
don't think you have enough sadism to perform the operation on me."
Farradyne looked at her. He held enough dislike of what she stood for
to do almost anything with cold deliberation, for he thought any pain
was small retribution. But she was still a woman.
Carolyn sniffed cynically, and Farradyne realized that he had mumbled
the last few words of his thoughts. "Just retribution, Charles, but
have you the guts to collect your revenge?"
He looked down at her. "No, I haven't. But I've someone with me who
might."
He took aim and sailed down the stairs. He soared around the stateroom
corridor and ran full-tilt into a flurry of floating skirts. He hurled
Norma from him and recoiled. When he caught himself again, he had one
hand braced against the handrail and the pistol aimed at the middle of
her stomach. She righted herself as he let out his breath and relaxed
his gun-hand.
"Don't ever do that!" he said sharply.
She looked at the gun and her face went white with the realization of
how close it had been. She looked at him searchingly as if seeking
company for her fright. She apparently found it, for her face relaxed
and she took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Then she fought the hem
of her skirt down again and blushed.
Farradyne chuckled, "Go into Number Four and swipe a pair of Carolyn
Niles' pajamas," he said. "They don't float. Then come up to the salon."
He turned and headed back slowly, stalling until he heard her return to
the corridor.
He went first and helped her make the curve around the railing at the
top. Solicitously, he steered her to the divan and fastened the seat
strap.
Then he faced Carolyn and the rest. "Speaking of retribution," he
said slowly. "I'd like you to meet a woman I know. Miss Norma Hannon.
She's a hellflower addict. Whatever she does is basically your
responsibility." He said directly to Carolyn, "You have me fairly well
pegged. I couldn't do it. But I think that Miss Hannon might enjoy
a bit of an emotional binge with the people who fed her the first
hellflower and caused the death of her brother." Farradyne turned and
sailed across the room to Norma's side. He reached out quietly and
removed the love lotus from Norma's hair, then recrossed the room to
hurl it into the disposal chute.
"Just sit there quietly until the effects of that thing wear off,"
he told her. "I'm going to take a tour of inspection of the gewgaw
they installed in my ship. I'll be back when they decide to answer
questions."
Farradyne dived down the stairway again. He had no idea how long it
might take, especially after Norma had been literally sleeping in a
smothering roomful of the things for hours. Probably long enough for
them all to get the whim-whams just thinking about it, he concluded.
He conned every stateroom on his way down. He was reasonably certain
that the ruckus would have awakened them all, but he wanted to make
sure that no one in them was lying doggo until he could make his bid.
They were all empty, so Farradyne went on down in the Lancaster,
checking the supply rooms and the galley and workshop, the other cargo
lock and the storage room. He looked into the inspection cubbies and
the wiring hatches until he had covered every nook and cranny that was
large enough to contain a human being.
The ship was clean.
He stopped once more to eye the four metal cases bolted to the floor
and discovered that the gentleman who had occupied the place when he
and Norma tried to hide had put nuts on the bolt ends and run the
cables neatly below-deck so they no longer trailed. He went up, then,
all the way.
"Any talk?" he asked brightly as he soared through the salon.
"Farradyne, you can't do this!" snapped Brenner.
"Who, me?" asked Farradyne, in mock surprise. "I'm not doing anything!"
Norma was still sitting in her seat on the divan. She had not changed
position. But her face was losing its softness and her attention was no
longer diverted easily. "I'm waiting," she told him as he passed upward
to the control room.
Somehow, Farradyne believed, it would not be very long waiting.
20
Farradyne paid no attention to the oddness of the sky because it could
tell him nothing and he had more interesting things to inspect. The
little auxiliary panel was gone. The controls had been incorporated in
the main panel, neatly and as if they had always been there; in such a
way as to make any but a completely critical inspection pass them over.
They blended with the other myriad controls, so that only the pilot of
the ship would be able to find them.
There was a small meter, calibrated arbitrarily in three sectors of
colors. The needle stood high in the middle of the blue region. Below
the meter was a cross-bar toggle switch and on either side of the
toggle were flat buttons set flush with the panel, blue to the right
and red to the left. The wiring was concealed, Farradyne found by
looking under the panel that it had been neatly inserted into the main
bundle of cables and wires as though it had been installed with the
Lancaster's construction.
He considered the installation carefully.
In the history of warfare, Farradyne had heard of no one installing
a device that would blow up a whole equipment if the operator used
the wrong combination. In fact, designers worked hard to make such
equipment fool-proof because they knew how rattled a man can get in the
heat of battle. The worst he could do was probably the blowing of a
fuse if he tampered with it. On the other hand....
So much for that, he thought, and went on to the next matter:
destruction charges.
Big prime movers like battlecraft and stationary installations seldom
fell into the hands of an enemy in any condition to be reused. Either
the big stuff was shot to hell before the enemy captured it and was
therefore unfunctional, or there was time for the crew to render the
big stuff useless long before the installation was abandoned. There
were booby-traps, of course, but these were usually improvised on the
spot, or at least installed from a stock closet at the time of possible
capture. No thinking nation would ever install a booby-trap permanently
because of the possibility of the operator punching the wrong button.
Self-destruction devices were another item. These came shortly after
the Military discovered the electron, and at a time when there were
basic new designs of equipment the function of which it had been
necessary to keep secret from the enemy. Countless pieces of apparatus
had been equipped with self-destruction charges heavy enough to addle
the insides of the gear, and possibly bulge the case a bit. But a man
could sit on one of them while the charge went off and the most he
would get would be a sharp kick in the pants.
But such destruction charges were controlled from a separate panel.
There could be no mistake or error; no one could hit the wrong button.
Destruction must be performed with deliberation.
And so Farradyne eyed the new installation calmly. It might hold a
self-destruction charge, but the probabilities of having the control
handy enough to be used in the heat of excitement were remote,
especially since such a condition would leave a ship and crew marooned
in the depths of interstellar space to die because someone's finger
slipped. Farradyne was even certain that not much could happen if he
tinkered with the toggle, so long as they were in deep space by some
light years distant from anything large and hard.
He took the toggle bar in his right hand and pulled. It did not pull
so he pushed. It did not push. He turned the cross-bar slightly and
exerted effort. The bar moved downward in a wide arc and as it moved,
the seat of the chair slammed upwards against the seat of his pants,
and all of a sudden up was up and down was down, and the stars were all
in their right places. The toggle came to a stop and the accelerometer
read one gravity. The needle on the meter still read halfway into the
blue.
Farradyne chuckled aloud. He had it now. If the traffic lights flared
blue-green for "GO" and red-orange for "STOP" he had this combination
as well. Start your spacecraft and punch the blue button for start.
That was the beginning and the warm-up and nothing could happen until
the meter read into the blue section of its scale. Then the toggle
controlled the action of whatever generator of force was used, more
or less as the toggle was advanced or depressed. The equipment stayed
in readiness all the time. The red button was undoubtedly the cut-off
button to close the gear down once the flight was completed.
It was as simple as that. Farradyne had spent many an hour in
spacemen's bars up and down the solar system in spacemen's happy
arguments regarding the complexities of exotic equipment, so he
could theorize on both sides. The pro side was a matter of insisting
that electromechanical principles were universal and therefore an
alien bit of gear would function in a recognizable manner. The con
side considered the fruitless arguments that something new might be
discovered or that the evolution of instruments from the original
principles would follow the normal dexterity of the alien life-form
involved. But Farradyne knew that buttons are buttons and therefore
meant to be pushed, not pulled; and similarly, D'Arsonval had invented
the same kind of galvanometer as Ugthrybb, on Vega, with a moving
coil between the poles of a magnet, and just because one race was
right-handed and the other left, the principle did not change.
Then, being of a practical frame of mind, Farradyne forgot the subject
and began to wonder about his position and what he was going to do
about it. He squinted into the point-of-drive telescope and caught
sight of a tiny yellow star on the cross-hairs. That must be Sol,
distant, small, and far weaker than Sol as seen from Pluto. It was a
true stellar point from here.
Then he looked through the point-of-departure periscope and
automatically cut the drive so that the flare would not blind him.
Behind was the constellation of Lyra and on the cross-hairs was another
star of no particular consequence. No more important than Sol. He
got out the Spaceman's Star Catalog and opened it to Lyra. Among the
listings were a number of the F, G, and K classifications, and one of
them, about twenty-seven light years from Sol was listed for the right
position in the constellation. Farradyne grunted; it meant nothing to
him. It was merely Lyra.
The sound of a whimper cut into his thought and he remembered the
possibilities of the scene in the salon. He waited. He snapped on the
intercom and listened, wondering whether he could sit there and let
Norma go to work on Carolyn. Man's inhumanity to man was a pale and
insignificant affair compared to the animal ferocity of a woman about
to settle up a long-standing account with another woman.
"Charles, come down here and take this madwoman away!" cried Carolyn.
Farradyne sauntered down the stairs. Norma stood before the bound
Carolyn. Her eyes were glassy, her face cold. In one hand she held a
small bottle of acid from Farradyne's workshop, in the other a small,
pointed brush. As he came down the stairs, Norma dipped the brush in
the acid and approached Carolyn, holding the brush as she would a
pencil.
Farradyne held her hand. "Wait!" he said.
Norma looked at him with a trace of anger in her eyes. "Don't stop
me," she said. "I'm going to write 'Hellflower' across that alabaster
forehead--among other words."
Farradyne shuddered. His imagination had stopped working at the
point of removing fingernails and applying lighted cigarettes to the
skin. Now it leaped forward again and he could see the outcome of
this assault upon the woman's pride and beauty. A formerly flawless
skin covered with scar-tissue lettering of accusals, viciousness and
probably lewdness.
"Take her away!" said Carolyn. "There is no point in this."
"Why not? Or are you ready to talk?"
"I'll talk. I'll talk because you will never get a chance to use it."
"You talk and I'll take my chances on that. Give me the works."