Louis Taranto sat on his heels against the baked clay wall of the
cell, watching the sweat run down the face of his companion. Though
he privately considered Harvey Meyers a very weak link, he had so
far restrained himself from hinting as much. They were in this hole
together, and he might well need the blubbery loudmouth's help to get
out--if there were any way to get out.
Meyers sat on the single bench with which their jailers had provided
them, staring mournfully at the rude table upon which he rested his
elbows. He was unusually quiet, as if the heat had drained him of all
anxiety.
_Sloppy bum!_ thought Taranto. _He could at least comb his hair!_
They were allowed occasional access to toilet articles which the
Syssokans had obtained from the one Terran officially in residence on
the planet. Taranto had shaved the day before, but the other had not
bothered for more than a week. Meyers was perhaps an inch short of six
feet and must weigh two hundred pounds Terran. He had a loose mouth
between pudgy cheeks. His little blue eyes seemed always to be prying
except during periods such as the present when he was feeling sorry for
himself. He had been a medic in the same spaceship in which Taranto had
been a ventilation mechanic.
"Glad I was never sick," Taranto muttered to himself.
Meyers looked up.
"Huh?"
"I said I'm glad I was never sick," repeated Taranto deliberately,
thinking, _Let him figure that out if he can!_
"This heat's enough to make anybody sick," complained Meyers. "Why do
they have to keep us up on the top floor of the tower, anyway?"
"You expect a luxury suite in the cellar? What kind of jail were you
ever in where the prisoners got the best?"
"Who says I was ever in jail?" demanded Meyers defensively.
Taranto grinned slightly, but made no reply. After a moment, the
other returned to his study of the table. He breathed in loudly, his
shoulders heaving as if he had been running. To avoid the sight,
Taranto let his eyes wander for the thousandth time around the walls of
the square cell.
The large blocks of baked clay were turning from dun to gray in the
twilight seeping through the four small window openings. Overhead,
they curved together to form a high arch that was the peak of the
tower. Besides table and bench, the room contained a clay water jug a
yard high, a wooden bucket, a battered copper cooking pot, and a pile
of coarse straw upon which lay the two gray shirts the spacers had
discarded in the heat. In the center of the floor was a wooden trap
door which Taranto eyed speculatively.
He reminded himself that he must suppress his longing to smash the next
Syssokan head that appeared in the opening.
"It's getting near time," he remarked after a few minutes.
Meyers peered at the patches of sky revealed by the windows. They were
losing the glare of Syssokan daylight. There had been a wisp or two
of cloud earlier, but these had either blown over or faded into the
deepening gray of the sky.
"Listen at the door!" ordered Taranto, impatient at having to remind
the other.
He rose, wiped perspiration from his face with the palms of both hands,
and rubbed them in turn on the thighs of his gray pants. He was inches
shorter than Meyers, and twenty pounds or more lighter, but his bare
shoulders bulged powerfully. A little fat softened the lines of his
belly without concealing the existence of an underlying layer of solid
muscle. He moved with a heavy, padding gait, like a large carnivore
whose natural grace is revealed only at top speed.
Meyers watched him resentfully.
_Why couldn't I have made it to one of the other emergency rockets?_ he
asked himself. _Imagine a bunch of crazy savages that say even landing
here is a crime!_
He supposed that Taranto would have pointed to the sizable city where
they were held if he had heard the Syssokans called savages. Meyers
thought the trouble with Taranto was that he was too physical, too
much of a dumb flunky who spoiled Meyers' efforts to talk them out of
trouble.
_I had a better break coming_, he thought.
He wished he had been in a rocket with one of the ship's officers who
might have known about Syssoka. They would have gone into an orbit
about the planet's star and put out a call for help to the nearest
Terran base or ship. As it was, they might be given up for lost even if
the other rockets were picked up. The course they had been on before
the explosion had been designed to pass this system by a good margin.
Taranto, he recalled, had thought them lucky to have picked up the
planet on the little escape ship's instruments. Taranto, decided
Meyers, thought he was a hot pilot because he had been a few years in
space. He had not looked so good bending the rocket across that ridge
of rock out in the desert. They should have taken a chance on coming
down in the city here.
They had just about straightened themselves out after that landing
when they had seen the party of Syssokans on the way. It had not taken
them long to reach the wreck. They could even speak Terran, and no
pidgin-Terran either. Then it turned out that they did not like spacers
of any race landing without permission. There had been a war with the
next star system; and the laws now said there should be only one alien
of any race permitted to reside on Syssoka except for brief visits by
licensed spaceships.
"What's the matter with our government?" muttered Meyers.
"What?" asked Taranto, turning from one of the windows.
"I said what's the matter with the Terran Government? Why don't they
pitch a couple of bombs down here, an' show these skinny nuts who's
running the galaxy? Who are they to call us aliens?"
Taranto turned again to the eighteen inch square window, set like the
other three in the center of its wall at the level of his shoulders.
"They're posting their sentries on the city wall for the night," he
told Meyers. "The thing should be flying in here any time now."
"_If_ it comes," said Meyers grumpily. "Something will go wrong with
that too."
The other spat out the window that faced the main part of the Syssokan
city, then padded to the one opposite. Strange patterns of stars
gleamed already in the sky over the desert. The air that blew against
his damp face was a trifle cooler.
_Should I tell the slob about that?_ he wondered. _Naw--he'd try to
breathe it all! Let him sweat, as long as he listens for the Syssokans!_
Meyers had left his bench to crouch over the trap door. There was
no reason to expect their jailers, but the Syssokans had a habit of
popping up at odd times. The evening meal was usually brought well
after dark, however.
"Do you think it will really get here again?" asked Meyers. "What if
they spot it?"
Taranto grunted. He was watching something he thought was one of the
flying insects that thickened the Syssokan twilight. Seconds later, he
ducked away from the window as a pencil-sized thing with two pairs of
flailing wings darted through the opening.
It whirled about the dim cell. Meyers flapped his hands about his head.
The third time around, the insect passed within Taranto's reach; and he
batted it out of the air with a feline sweep of his left hand. It fell
against the base of the wall and twitched for a few minutes.
Meyers squinted at him, examining the slightly flattened nose and the
meaty cheeks that gave Taranto a deceptively plump look.
"You're quick, all right," he admitted. "They used to say in the ship
that you were a boxer. What made you a spacer?"
"Too short," said Taranto laconically. "Five-eight, an' I grew into a
light-heavy."
"What did that have to do with it?"
"I did all right for a while. When I could get in on them, they'd go
down an' stay down. Then they learned to stick an' run on me. It was
either grow a longer arm or quit."
"Maybe you should have quit sooner," said Meyers, for no good reason
except that he resented Taranto and blamed him for their predicament.
"Why should I?" asked Taranto, with a cold stare. "It was good money.
Even after having my eyebrows fixed, I got a nice nest-egg back on
Terra. Nothing really shows on me except the habit of a short haircut."
Meyers ran his fingers through his own unkempt hair.
"What was that for?" he asked.
"Oh ... it don't wave in the air so much when you stop a jab. Looks
better, to the judges."
Meyers grunted. _He'd like to believe it doesn't show on him!_ he
thought.
Suddenly, he bent down to place an ear against the trap door. A
petulant grimace twisted his features.
"They're on the ladder," he whispered. "Wouldn't you know?"
He straightened up and walked softly back to his bench. Taranto
remained at the window. It was a perfectly natural place for him to be,
he decided.
A few moments later, the trap door creaked up, letting yellow light
burst into the cell. It came from a clumsy electric lantern in
the grip of the first Syssokan who climbed into the chamber. Two
others followed, suggestively fingering pistols that would have been
considered crude on Terra two centuries earlier.
The individual with the light was typical of his race, a tall,
cadaverous humanoid with pale, greenish-gray skin made up of tiny
scales. His nose was flatter than that of a Terran ape, and his chin
consisted mostly of a hanging fold of scaly skin. His ears were set
very low on a narrow, pointed skull. Occasionally, they made small
motions as if to fold in upon themselves.
The Syssokans were clad in garments not unlike loose, sleeveless
pajamas, over which they wore leather harness for their weapons. The
leader's suit was red, but the other two wore a dull brown.
"Iss all ssatissfactory?" asked the one in charge, staring about the
cell with large, black eyes.
"All right," said Taranto stonily.
He thought that a Syssokan would never have answered that way. They
were vain of their extraordinary linguistic ability, and commonly spoke
three or four alien tongues. Only an unfortunate inability to control
excessive sibilance marred their Terran. Taranto felt like wiping his
face, but realized that it was only sweat.
The Syssokan prowled around the room, examining each of the simple
furnishings with a flickering glance. He took note of the food left in
the copper pot. He checked the level of water in the big jar. He found
the dead insect, which he sniffed and slipped into a pouch at his belt.
When he passed Taranto, the latter eyed him in measuring fashion.
The Syssokan halted out of reach.
"You have been warned to obey all orderss here," he said, staring
between the two Terrans.
"What's the trouble now?" demanded Meyers when it became apparent that
the poker-faced Taranto intended to say nothing.
"There wass a quesstion by the Terran we allow on the world. How can he
know of your complaints? He was told only or your ssentence."
"We told you there would be protests from our government," said
Meyers. "All we did was land on your planet in an emergency: We're only
too willing to leave. You have no right to keep us locked up in these
conditions."
"It iss a violation of our law," said the Syssokan imperturbably. "You
go automatically to jail. We permit only one of every sky people to
live here. Who could tell yours that you complain of thiss place?"
"Listen, you better be careful of us Terrans!" blustered Meyers. "We
have ways--"
"Shut up!" said Taranto without raising his voice.
He had inched forward, but stopped now as the two guards at the trap
door gave him their attention.
The Syssokan with the lantern also turned to him. Taranto looked over
the latter's shoulder. The window was black; the twilight of Syssoka
was brief.
Meyers had flushed and was scowling at him with out-thrust lower lip,
but Taranto's icy order had spilled the wind from his sails.
"Perhapss you have had too much water," suggested the Syssokan,
regarding Taranto with interest. "If you have done ssomething, it iss
besst to tell me."
Taranto returned the stare. He wondered why all the Syssokans he had
seen, though rather fragile in build, were relatively thick-waisted.
They looked to him as if a couple of solid hooks to the body would find
a soft target.
It was unlikely that the Syssokan could read the facial expression of
an alien Terran. It was probably some tenseness in Taranto's stance
that caused the native to step back.
The Terran strained his ears to pick up any unusual noise outside the
window during the pause. He heard nothing except the whir of night
insects.
Their jailer paced once more around the cell, and Taranto cursed
himself for arousing suspicion. Perhaps, he hoped, it was only
annoyance.
_But what could I do?_ he asked himself. _Let Meyers spill it?_
In the end, with Taranto answering in monosyllables and Meyers
intimidated into an unnatural reserve, the Syssokans retired. The
darkness closed in upon the Terrans as they listened to the creaking of
the ladder below the trap door.
"Give them time," advised Taranto, hearing Meyers move toward the exit.
They waited in the silent dark until Meyers could stand it no longer.
"They won't come back," he whispered.
"Well, make sure," said Taranto shortly. "Get your ear to the wood!"
He felt his way to the window that faced away from the city. After the
heat of the day, the air blowing in was almost cold; and he considered
putting on his shirt. The realization that he would have to scrabble
around the pile of straw for it gave him pause. His next thought was
that he might come up with the wrong shirt, and that discouraged him
completely.
His eyes had adjusted enough to the night to pick out the low hills of
the desert where they broke the line of the horizon. Starlight glinted
softly where there were stretches of sand. He settled down to wait, his
arms folded upon the ledge of the window.
It was nearly half an hour later, when he suspected Meyers of dozing
on the trap door, that Taranto heard something more than an insect zip
past the window. He backed away and hissed to attract Meyers' attention.
"Did it come?" whispered the other.
"I think so," answered Taranto.
A tiny hum drifted through the window. Into the opening, timidly, edged
a small, hovering shape.
"Okay," said Taranto in a low voice, even though he knew the room was
being scanned by an infra-red detector.
The shape blossomed out with a midget light. Enough of the glow was
reflected from the adobe walls to reveal that a miniature flying
mechanism the size of a man's hand had landed on the window ledge.
After a moment, its rotors ceased their whirring. Taranto jabbed
backward with an elbow as he heard Meyers creep up behind him.
"Listen at the door, dammit!" he snarled. "All we need is to get caught
at this, an' we'll be here till they turn out the sun!"
"Taranto!" piped a tiny voice from the machine. "Are you ready,
Taranto?"
"Go ahead!"
"Two pills coming out of the hold." The voice was clear enough in the
stillness of the Syssokan night.
A hatch in the belly of the little flyer slid back. Two capsules
spilled out on the window ledge. Taranto scooped them up.
"You each take one, with water," instructed the voice. "Better wait
till just before dawn. You told me they bring your food an hour later."
"That's right," whispered Taranto.
"That will give the stuff time to act. For all they can tell, you will
both be deader than a burned-out meteorite."
"Then what?"
"So they will follow their normal custom with the dead--take you out
to the desert to mummify. This thing will hover overhead to spot the
location."
"Do they just ... leave us?"
"Yes, as far as anybody has ever been able to find out. I talked to the
Capellan next door in the foreign quarter here, and he says they might
not leave you in one of their own burial grounds. Otherwise, I would
hate to take the chance of having this gadget seen in the daylight."
"All right, so we're out in the desert," said Taranto. "How does this
ship you arranged for pick us up? We'll still be out for the count."
"I plan to tell them where to touch down. I can talk louder by radio,
you know, than I can to you now. They will grab your 'bodies' and
scramble for space. Against the sunset, they may not even be seen from
the city. If they are, I never heard of them."
"Who are they?" asked Taranto.
"Some bunch hired for the job by the D.I.R.'s Department 99. Just as
well not to ask where they come from or what their usual line is."
"I ain't got any questions at all, if they get us out of here," said
Taranto.
He watched as the hatch closed itself and the tiny light blinked out.
The rotors began to spin, and two minutes later they were alone.
"Come and get yours," said the spacer.
He reached out with his empty hand to guide Meyers to him, then very
carefully delivered one of the capsules to the other.
"We're supposed to swallow that big lump?" whispered Meyers.
"Just don't lose it," admonished Taranto.
He relayed the instructions as precisely as he could.
"One thing more," he concluded. "You stay awake to make sure I stay
awake until it's time to take the stuff."
"We could take watches," suggested Meyers.
"_I_ could," said Taranto bluntly, "but I'm not sure about you. In the
second place, I ain't going to have you sleep while I don't. We're
going to play this as safe as possible."
Meyers grumbled something inaudibly. In the darkness, a sardonic smile
twisted Taranto's lips.
"If you know how," he advised, "pray! We're goin' to our funeral in the
morning."