Lance's anger seethed to a boil. Hunching his shoulders, he rammed back
against the guard holding him, sending him tumbling. What was inside his
mind to do if he managed an escape, he couldn't have told. He only knew
he had to get away. The colonel had flipped.
And where, by the way, was Carolyn? It seemed impossible she could be in
on it, too.
He stood free for a moment, watching warily.
"Hold him!" shouted Colonel Sagen. "Don't let him run loose."
"We got gas pills, colonel," suggested the space cop Lance had bowled
over. The man was rising to his feet.
"Use them."
Lance started to run. Over his shoulder, he saw the guard reach inside a
small pocket in his webbed pistol belt. The man gestured to the others
to duck back out of harm's way. Then, his throwing arm reared back and
sent a pellet sailing in a high arc. It landed at Lance's feet and burst
instantly. Yellowish gas billowed out. Its acrid fumes penetrated
Lance's throat and nostrils. He began coughing. Then, all the fight
suddenly ebbed from him. His knees buckled. He was stumbling, falling.
The sky reeled.
And very indistinctly, from far away, came the colonel's voice, barking:
"Put him in the brig until he recovers. I repeat, let nobody see him.
And another thing--I declare everything that's happened here today
classified information. If a single word leaks out, I'll have every
man-jack among you placed in solitary and held for court-martial."
Then, Lance knew nothing more.
* * * * *
When at last he recovered consciousness and was able to sit up in a kind
of groggy stupor, Lance found himself, for the first time in fifteen
service-devoted years, on the inside of a guardhouse looking out.
With sardonic melancholy, he recalled times on his O.D. and O.G. tours
when he had inspected various prison areas, peered into the cells, and
often felt mildly sorry for some poor spaceman doing time for some minor
infraction. There had never been very many offenders. Discipline on
space bases was not a pressing problem: the corps was an elite branch
and intransigent candidates were weeded out quick.
Well, now he was a prisoner, himself. He, Lance Cooper, Major, Space
Service, stood behind bars. And no matter how hard his face pressed
against those bars, he could only see as far as the corridor extended in
either direction.
It wasn't far enough.
Nor would anybody talk to him. He couldn't even get the time of day.
Not since his probation as a plebe, had he consorted with such a bunch
of "hush-mouths." Had he no rights as a commissioned officer and a world
citizen? He still didn't know why he was incarcerated, or what
regulation he had broken.
But that wasn't his most nagging worry.
What preyed on his mind most was Carolyn.
_Where was she?_
_Where? Where? WHERE?_
He could have lowered his head and pounded it to a pulp against the
wall, in his rage and frustration at being confined. But banging his
brains out wouldn't help. Besides, he was going to stand deeply in need
of his gray matter, if he hoped to get out of this one.
At evening time, a guardhouse trusty brought him his supper on a tray.
Also, the man tossed him half a pack of cigarettes when Lance sought to
bum just one. But when the pilot started pitching questions back, the
trusty looked scared and unhappy and quickly limped away.
The night dragged on, as unending seemingly as one of Luna's two-week
darkouts. Lance smoked, paced the cell from wall to wall, occasionally
plopped down on his cot and went over everything that had happened,
trying to find some pattern to it.
But there was no pattern.
Next morning, he splashed up and shaved beard away from a tired,
red-eyed face in the mirror. Then, he waited. No one came.
Finally, at noon a new officer checked in for duty at the guardhouse.
Lance recognized him as a young ordinance captain he'd met before. He
called out to the man. The officer, striding down the hallway, wheeled
at the sound of his name and came back to the cell. His eyes bugged
slightly, when he saw Lance: "Holy smoke, major! What've they got you in
for?"
"Search me." Lance was overjoyed to find someone, at last, who didn't
dummy up. "I thought maybe you might have a notion."
"I just came on duty. But if there's a charge sheet lying around, I
might dig up something from it."
"Would you try?"