Commander Grinnel was officer of the day, and sore as a boil about it.
O.N.I. wasn't supposed to catch the duty. You risked your life on
cloak-and-dagger missions; let the shore-bound fancy dans do the
drudgery. But there he was, nevertheless, in the guard house office with
a .45 on his hip, the interminable night stretching before him, and the
ten-man main guard snoring away outside.
He eased his bad military conscience by reflecting that there wasn't
anything to guard, that patrolling the shore establishment was just worn
out tradition. The ships and boats had their own watch. At the very
furthest stretch of the imagination, a tarzan might sneak into town and
try to steal some ammo. Well, if he got caught he got caught. And if he
didn't, who'd know the difference with the accounting as sloppy as it
was here? They did things differently in Iceland.
* * * * *
They crept through the midnight dark of New Portsmouth's outskirts. As
before, she led with her small hand. Lights flared on a wharf where,
perhaps, a boat was being serviced. A slave screamed somewhere under the
lash or worse.
"Here's the doss house," Martha whispered. It was smack between
paydays--part of the plan--and the house was dark except for the
hopefully-lit parlor. They ducked down the alley that skirted it and
around the back of Bachelor Officer Quarters. The sentry, if he were
going his rounds at all, would be at the other end of his post when they
passed--part of the plan.
Lee Falcaro was quartered alone in a locked room of the O.N.I. building.
Martha had, from seventy miles away, frequently watched the lock being
opened and closed.
They dove under the building's crumbling porch two minutes before a late
crowd of drinkers roared down the street and emerged when they were
safely gone. There was a charge of quarters, a little yeoman, snoozing
under a dim light in the O.N.I. building's lobby.
"Anybody else?" Charles whispered edgily.
"No. Just her. She's asleep. Dreaming about--never mind. Come on
Charles. He's out."
The little yeoman didn't stir as they passed him and crept up the
stairs. Lee Falcaro's room was part of the third-floor attic, finished
off specially. You reached it by a ladder from a second-floor one-man
office.
The lock was an eight-button piccolo--very rare in New Portsmouth and
presumably loot from the mainland. Charles' fingers flew over it:
1-7-5-4-, 2-2-7-3-, 8-2-6-6- and it flipped open silently.
But the door squeaked.
"She's waking up!" Martha hissed in the dark. "She'll yell!"
Charles reached the bed in two strides and clamped his hand over Lee
Falcaro-Bennet's mouth. Only a feeble "mmm!" came out, but the girl
thrashed violently in his grip.
"Shut up, lady!" Martha whispered. "Nobody's going to rape you."
There was an astonished "mmm?" and she subsided, trembling.
"Go ahead," Martha told him. "She won't yell."
He took his hand away nervously. "We've come to administer the oath of
citizenship," he said.
The girl answered in the querulous voice that was hardly hers: "You
picked a strange time for it. Who are you? What's all the whispering
for?"
He improvised. "I'm Commander Lister. Just in from Iceland aboard atom
sub _Taft_. They didn't tell you in case it got turned down, but I was
sent for authorization to give you citizenship. You know how unusual it
is for a woman."
"Who's this child? And why did you get me up in the dead of night?"
He dipped deeply into Martha's probings of the past week.
"Citizenship'll make the Guard Intelligence gang think twice before they
try to grab you again. Naturally they'd try to block us if we
administered the oath in public. Ready?"
"Dramatic," she sneered. "Oh, I suppose so. Get it over with."
"Do you, Lee Bennet, solemnly renounce all allegiances previously held
by you and pledge your allegiance to the North American Government?"
"I do," she said.
There was a choked little cry from Martha. "Hell's fire," she said.
"Like breaking a leg!"
"What are you talking about, little girl?" Lee asked, coldly alert.
"It's all right," Charles said wearily. "Don't you know my voice? I'm
Orsino. You turned me in back there because they don't give, citizenship
to women and so your de-conditioning didn't get triggered off. I managed
to break for the woods. A bunch of natives got me. I busted loose with
the help of Martha here. Among her other talents, the kid's a mind
reader. I remember the triggering shocked me out of a year's growth; how
do you feel?"
Lee was silent, but Martha answered in a voice half puzzled and half
contemptuous: "She feels fine, but she's crying."
"Am not," Lee Falcaro gulped.
Charles turned from her, embarrassed. In a voice that strove to be
normal, he whispered to Martha: "What about the boat?"
"Still there," she said.