Hale did not feel well at all. He kept putting one foot in front of the
other, pushing himself through the blue sand, but he would much rather
have crawled into the shade and gone to sleep. His brow was feverish,
and his arms and legs and neck felt stiff. It had been two days since
he had been caught in the rain, and his sniffles and sneezes had
developed into congested lungs and a stopped-up nose. He felt like hell.
The sun was low in the evening sky, but the air was warm and soothing.
He was quite a distance from the mountains now, and there was no longer
much of a fog at night.
Hale squinted his eyes at the sun.
"Dab it," he said aloud, "I'm dot godda walk eddybore today! I'b godda
sit dowd ad relax."
Fever, plus loneliness, plus acute boredom, had started him in the
relatively harmless pastime of talking to himself. He had come a long
way on the hard-packed blue sand--which was easier to travel over than
the rocky shelf above it--and his food had almost reached the halfway
point.
He sat down in the shelter of the cliff, unstrapped his pack, and
rummaged inside. Where the hell was the blasted aspirin? There. He took
out the bottle and gave himself a massive fifteen-grain dose. Maybe it
would make him feel better. He didn't like to use medicine; it made him
seem weak in his own eyes. But there are times when necessity is the
mother of prevention.
He ate, although he wasn't hungry. He was grateful for only one thing:
the synthetics were absolutely tasteless. The head congestion had taken
care of that.
Afterwards, he impatiently took another ten grains of aspirin, and,
still feeling terrible, he curled up to sleep.
He woke up when something prodded him. He was instantly awake, but he
didn't move except to open his eyes.
Standing over him were two men dressed in long gray-brown robes which
were tied at the waist with braided ropes. One of them was pointing a
tube at him that looked suspiciously like a missile weapon.
They were heavily bearded, but the beards were neatly trimmed, and
their hair was brushed back and cropped reasonably short.
The man with the gun said something in a commanding tone of voice and
gestured with his free hand. Hale didn't understand the command, but
the gesture plainly meant "Get up!"
Leland Hale was never a man to argue with a gun. He stood up slowly.
As he did, the expressions on the faces of the two men altered
slightly. Hale couldn't understand the new expressions at first, hidden
as they were by the beards. Then, as they backed away a little, he
understood. The men were no more than five eight; he towered a good ten
inches above them.
The armed man spoke again, waving the gun. Hale interpreted this as
"All right, let's go." He complied. He didn't know where they were
taking him, but almost anything was better than being alone. He wasn't
too worried; he'd been in plenty of tight spots before. Jailbreaking
was nothing new to Leland Hale.
It was just barely dawn. The sky was light, but the edge of the sun had
not quite shown itself over the eastern horizon, far out to sea.
The trio walked along silently for a couple of miles, then they topped
a little rise and went up a long slope to the top of the cliff. Below
him, Hale saw a village. Taun. He realized that if he had been walking
along the ridge instead of on the shore, he would have seen the town
the night before.
Down the slope they went, heading for the little cluster of houses
surrounding the small bay.
* * * * *
There weren't many people in the streets of the small town, although
there seemed to be plenty of activity around the docks. Hale could see
tilled fields to the west of the settlement, where there were people
already at work.
A third man in a gray-brown robe met them in the middle of one of the
cobblestone streets and asked something of Hale's guards. They stopped,
and a long conversation followed. Hale strained his ears to catch the
words.
At first, it was complete gibberish, but Hale knew what key words to
listen for, and gradually he picked up more and more.
As on every inhabited planet of the galaxy, the language of Cardigan's
Green was derived from Terran--basically English, with large additions
of Russian, Chinese, and Spanish. Hale had traveled a great deal in his
life--partly by choice and partly because often he had no choice. He
had heard and spoken a hundred different dialects of Terran, and the
assimilation of a new derivation was almost automatic.
The two guards were telling the new man that they had found a stranger
on the beach, and describing in detail how it had come about. They
were, it seemed, going to take him to the Village Officer--whoever that
might be.
The third man told them that the Officer was away somewhere--Hale
didn't catch it.
The guard who carried the gun said that Hale would be taken to "the
brig" to await the Officer's pleasure.
The third man nodded and hurried off, while Hale was prodded onward.
"The brig" proved to be a small building with a heavy iron door and
thick iron bars at the windows. Hale didn't like the looks of the
place, but he didn't like the feel of the missile weapon at his back,
either. In he went.
He took his pack off and submitted to search. Then the guards went
outside, taking the pack with them. The heavy door rang like a bell
when they slammed it. A second clang indicated a bar across the door.
"I'll be damned," said Hale softly. "I run seventy thousand light years
to stay out of one jail and walk right into another."
He listened to his own voice and noted with satisfaction that his
congestion was clearing up.
There were voices outside. Hale strolled over to the window to listen.
"What is he? An Islander?" asked a voice. Hale hadn't heard it before;
obviously another seeker after knowledge--a local busybody.
"He's an Islander, all right," said one of the guards. "He wears their
clothing." Hale was wearing a standard spaceman's zipsuit and his
insulation jacket.
"But what would an Islander want to come here for? None of them have
left the Island since their ship landed, twelve years ago."
"Isn't that obvious? Their Captain Doctor wants to make a deal with the
Fisher."
Hale listened patiently, and gradually the situation became clearer.
Out on the island across the channel was a ship. From the title
"Captain Doctor," he gathered that it was an IHC ship. It had been
there for twelve years.
Hale kept his ears open as more information trickled in. Several more
of the townspeople joined the discussion group, and the conversation
became livelier. Hale drank it all in, filing and indexing it in his
mind. Some of the words used weren't clear at times, but the context
helped.
Now, a confidence man is an opportunist; no successful con man can
afford to be anything else. He must, above all, be able to talk
his way out of, or into, anything. Leland Hale's record speaks for
itself; killer, thief, yes--but he was also a damned good con man. As
Interstellar Police Commander Desmon Shelley remarked some years later:
"Leland Hale could have sold antigravity belts to the crew of a ship
in free fall at double price--and even then he would have cheated by
leaving out the energy units."
Slowly, an idea began to form in his mind. Someone called the Fisher
wanted to make a deal with the people on the island. If he played his
cards right, Hale might be able to make a little profit, one way or
another.
* * * * *
It was several hours before the Village Officer showed up, and by then
Hale had the set-up pretty well in mind. His information was far from
complete, but he knew enough to enable him to run a bluff.
The Village Officer was a taller man than the other villagers, though
nowhere near as big a man as Hale. His full beard was slightly touched
with gray, and there was a streak of silver at each temple. His
eyes were dark, and a hawkish nose protruded from his face, almost
overshadowing the beard.
"I am Yon the Fisher," he announced. "And you?"
He stood outside the iron door, looking in through the open grillwork.
"Leland Hale. I've come here to hear your terms."
"They are the same," said Yon. "Repair my spaceship. Use replacement
parts from your own, if necessary. In return, I and my men will take
you to a planet where there is a space-port."
"_Your_ spaceship?" Hale asked pointedly.
Yon's bearded visage smiled a little. "Mine. I bought it legally from
Dornis the Fat ten years ago. It fell on his land, therefore, by law,
it was his to sell."
"What about the crew?" Hale asked. "It was their ship."
"True. Unfortunately, they died--ah--intestate. The property therefore
reverted to our legal government. But our aged Commander would have
nothing to do with it, so he ruled that it was the lawful property of
Dornis the Fat."
"Very neatly done," said Hale in honest admiration. "All legally sewed
up." He knew the claim wouldn't stand up in a court of interstellar
law, but he recognized the machinations of a fellow con man when he saw
them.
"Thank you," said Yon the Fisher. "Now let's get down to business. You
came here for a reason, I assume. Is it a deal, or isn't it? I can be
patient; I am on my own home planet. You, on the other hand, have been
virtually prisoners for twelve years."
"True," agreed Hale. "I think we can make some sort of agreement along
those lines. I was sent to look at your ship."
Yon the Fisher pondered this for a moment, then countered with: "Why?"
"We have to know how badly it's damaged. If it can't be repaired,
there's no sense in making any kind of deal, is there?"
"I see. Very well. We will go to my ship. However, we will have to take
precautions. You understand, I'm sure."
"Naturally," Hale said.
Hale's hands were bound behind him, and the guard with the gun followed
directly behind him.
There are no animals fit for riding purposes which are native to
Cardigan's Green, and eking out a bare living from the planet left the
colonists no time to develop mechanical aids to transportation. They
walked.
Several hours later, Leland Hale was inside the hull of the freighter
_Morris_. Under the watchful eye of Yon and his myrmidons, Hale went
over the whole vessel, saying as little as possible, and evading the
questions that were put to him. When he was finished, his face wore
a speculative look, but inside he was feeling positively gleeful. In
an hour, at the very most, he, alone, could put the vessel in working
order! The original crew of the _Morris_ had almost finished their work
when they succumbed to the Plague.
Surely there must be some way he could turn this to his advantage!
"I think it can be done," he said judiciously. "There's not a lot
of work to be done, but there are parts missing and so forth....
Hmmmm...." He looked around the control room in which they were
standing. It looked like a mess. All the paneling had been taken off
the circuit housings to work on the control systems. In the engine
section, the refractor domes were still off. The ship didn't look in
tip-top shape, but all that would have to be done was a half hour's
work on the generators and another half hour to close everything up.
"I don't know how long it will take, though," said Hale.
"I've kept it sealed and kept it clean," said Yon. "I'm no engineer, so
I kept my hands off of everything."
"Can you pilot her?" Hale asked.
"Easily. I have the piloting instructions that were left in Cardigan's
ship, and I have the astrogation charts from this one." He smiled. "I
have had twelve years to study."
Hale had to agree that Yon was probably right. A spaceship practically
guides and runs itself when it's in working order. An elementary
knowledge of astrogation and a good ship can get a man almost anywhere
in the galaxy.
"In that case, Yon," said Hale, smiling his best smile, "I think we can
get along. Let bygones be bygones."
"Excellent." Yon was trying hard to conceal his excitement and almost
succeeding. "Come; let's go back to Taun and I'll buy you a dinner."