Lawrence smiled. "I'm with you," he said.
* * * * *
The small scoutship slipped easily through the hatch of the Viagoni
cruiser and spiralled down into the atmosphere of Vega IX. Aboard, Jim
Lawrence rocked in his deceleration cradle and tried to form a strategy
for landing.
By the time the Viagoni medics had finished with him, he was the very
image of a Vegan--thin and dark, sinister-looking, tight-faced. That
might get him _into_ the Vegan base--but how was he going to get out?
He shrugged his shoulders. _I'll worry about that when the time comes_,
he told himself. Now, he waited while the remote-controlled scoutship
brought him closer and closer to the planet below.
Finally it dropped to the ground. He stepped out and found himself in
the midst of a vast, bleak plain. About a half-mile to the east, a
cluster of little buildings was evident--the upper portions, Illon had
told him, of the fortified underground Vegan base.
He crossed the plain at a quick trot and slipped into a group of silent
Vegans who were coming out of one of the above-surface buildings and
heading toward a shaft that apparently led downward into the base. They
were clad in overalls, and looked like workers. None of them spoke to
him as he joined their ranks.
He moved along down into the shaft with them. A fantastic underground
world opened before his eyes.
Great lights overhead cast illumination on the scene. Buildings reared
up ten, fifteen, twenty stories; massive machines pumped pistons back
and forth, booming noisily. It was a gigantic base, a center for the
conquest of the universe.
And somewhere in the heart of all this--somewhere was Andsu Meero and
the mindless body of Bette Bauer. If Meero had the chance to restore
the girl's mind and drain from her the secret of the annihilating ray--
But he didn't want to think about that. He kept going with the group of
workers he had fallen in with, and found that they were marching toward
a squat, windowless building that was the center of a good deal of
activity.
The Vegans he was with were silent men, dark-faced and taciturn, and
he was thankful for that. There was none of the genial camaraderie
that might have been present between a bunch of Earthmen in a similar
position. He followed them into the building, and discovered that it
was a tool dispensary of some kind. Each man was marching up to a
closet and taking forth something that looked like a large, heavy brush.
Jim dropped back toward the end of the line and chewed at his lip. No
doubt the tools would be apportioned one for each man in the squad,
which meant they would be short one. And he didn't want the men he was
with to suspect anything; he wanted to stay with them at least until
he had formulated a more definite plan of action.
He lingered at the back of the line, looking around. There was no one
behind him. He reached out for the man just in front of him and whacked
him across the throat with the edge of his hand.
The man coughed and retched, and Lawrence clamped a hand over his mouth
to silence him. Another quick blow and the Vegan dropped. Quietly,
Lawrence dragged him away and deposited him in a closet nearby.
Then he returned to the line. Now there would be one broom for each
man, no more.
* * * * *
When everyone was supplied, they marched solemnly back out the door of
the supply-room. Obediently, Lawrence followed along. No one seemed to
notice that a man was missing or that there was a stranger in the group.
They marched to the middle of the plaza, and there the first man in the
group bent and pried off a manhole. Then the Vegans began disappearing
even further into the earth. Tunnels within tunnels!
His turn came and he followed on down into the tunnel. For the first
time, one of the Vegans spoke, barking a short instruction in a harsh,
guttural language.
Lawrence heard the sound of air blowing through pipes, then the sound
of machinery grinding, then the slow whistle of the air-flow ceasing.
He realized where he was and what the crew was about to do, and his
heart surged. He had a plan, now.
He was in one of the air-shafts that fed the great subterranean Vegan
base. The air had just been shut off in this particular tube, and the
crew of Vegans he had joined was about to set to work scrubbing the
tube, ridding it of any impurities that might have accumulated.
Now he knew what to do. As he scrubbed merrily through the shining
length of the tube, he began to form his strategy.
It involved getting out of the tube, for one thing, and getting to a
medical office, if they had any such thing in the base. That was the
first step.
He counted to ten, then threw his broom in the air and uttered a
piercing shriek. Then he fell to the ground, panting and gasping, and
lay there flat against the cold metal of the airshaft.
Instantly his co-workers gathered around him. Twenty dark, unfriendly
faces peered down, and they began to gabble something in their
language that probably was the equivalent of "What's the matter with
you?"
He lolled his head from side to side as if to indicate that he had
suffered a stroke of some kind and couldn't speak. Drawing on his
psychiatric experience, Lawrence offered a good imitation of a
catatonic seizure, so convincing that before long he himself had burst
out in a cold sweat as he lay rigid there.
Another Vegan came over--evidently a superior--and rattled out a quick
command.
Immediately, two of the broom-workers put down their tools and hoisted
Lawrence between them. They began to march back through the airshaft
with him, up and out into the plaza again. They carried him into a
tall, gleaming building which was presumably the medical office.
He allowed one corner of his lip to curl upward in a smile of
satisfaction. So far, so good.
* * * * *
Two doctors were in attendance. They studied him closely, tapped him,
prodded him, and held long colloquies with each other. After a few
minutes of this, one of them disappeared into the adjoining room of the
medical office, apparently to prepare some sort of test.
The other Vegan doctor took a few steps back and consulted a bulky
red-bound volume on his desk. Apparently he'd never seen a seizure like
this before.
With one bound Lawrence was off the bed and at the doctor's side. He
whirled him around, smashed a fist into the medic's lean jaw, another
into his stomach.
From behind him came a shout of surprise, as the other doctor returned
to the room. Quickly, Lawrence scooped the unconscious doctor up and
hurled him at the other. They both went down in a shower of crashing
glasswork, and Lawrence sprang on top of them. Three solid punches did
the job.
He hastily ripped strips from the bed and bound them securely. Then he
began to prowl through the drug cabinet.
It wasn't easy, trying to read the labels in the alien language, but
James Lawrence was skilled in the handling of drugs, and before long he
had found what he wanted despite his inability to read the labels.
It was a pain-killing drug, one that was in use on Earth as well as
Vega. He could tell by the familiar sugary taste of the white powder
that this was the stuff.
Humming softly to himself, he slipped the bottle under his overalls,
waved farewell to the sleeping doctors, and ducked out the door.
Five minutes later, he was back in the airshaft, wielding his broom
energetically. He forged on to the front of the group, heading further
and further along in the airshaft, until finally he came to the place
he was looking for--the tube that led to the heart of the air supply.
He looked around. No one was watching. He pushed open the door to the
tube and slid quietly inside, trotting lightly until he reached the
central pump.
"Sweet dreams," he said thoughtfully, as he inverted the bottle of the
drug into the feeder that led to the pump. With that stuff filtering
through the air, the whole base would be out like a light within an
hour or so. There was enough knockout-potential in a bottle of that
stuff, he thought, to keep everyone under wraps long enough for him to
find Bette Bauer and get the blazes out of here.
* * * * *
Getting out was a harder job. It involved threading his way through the
maze of air-shafts once again, getting past the swabbing-crew, and out
into the open. But he made it. By now the air was beginning to smell
sweet, and he knew the drug was taking effect.
The problem now was to locate Meero. But that proved to be simple.
Lawrence headed across the plaza toward the pair of great buildings
that seemed to be the administrative sections of the base, and stopped
the first Vegan he saw.
"Andsu Meero?" he asked.
The Vegan looked blankly at him.
"_Andsu Meero_," Lawrence repeated, with great urgency.
The Vegan pointed to the building on the left and uttered a stream
of words. Lawrence smiled politely and headed toward the left-hand
building.
After he had gone about half the distance, he noticed the increase in
the sweetness in the air. He stopped, ripped off his shirt, and wrapped
it over his mouth and nose. That would be ample protection.
By the time he reached the building, the guards posted outside were
safely asleep. He seized one of the strange pistols from them, and
entered.
Where to find Meero and the girl, he wondered. Vegans were sagging into
sleep all over the lobby of the building. Shrugging his shoulders, he
decided there was only one way. He would have to look in every room of
the immense building.
But he didn't have far to look. After about ten minutes' search of the
slumber-wrapped building, he stepped into an ornate, impressive-looking
building, and found Meero.
Awake.
The thin Vegan whirled in astonishment as Lawrence entered. He
was at the back of the room, bending over the nude form of Bette
Bauer. Lawrence noticed a strange odor in the room, even through his
improvised face-mask--and it wasn't the odor of the drug he'd slipped
into the air system.
Angrily, Andsu Meero ripped out a barking sentence in Vegan. Then his
eyes narrowed. "Oh, the Earthman? How did _you_ get in here?"
Lawrence's pistol rose. "Get away from that girl, Meero. Get away or
I'll shoot you."
"Just try," Meero chuckled. He calmly drew his own gun from its
holster, and Lawrence realized with a shock that he was as good as
unarmed, because he did not know how to use the Vegan gun!
He hurled the useless gun at Meero and dove behind a chair just as the
Vegan's pistol fired. A section of the wall caved in. Lawrence peered
out, then ducked back as he saw Meero looking for him.
Cautiously, he began to thread his way along the side of the room
toward Meero.
"Don't move, Earthman," Meero said coldly. "I see you."
"But you don't see me!" cried a new voice. Surprised, the alien turned,
and in that moment Lawrence sprang and hit him with all he had. The
gun went flying from the Vegan's hands. He struck back, but Lawrence
parried the blow and smashed his fists into Meero's face. The alien
rolled over and lay still.
Lawrence glanced up at Bette Bauer, who had spoken.
"You saved my life," he said.
"And you mine." She reddened, and snatched a drape from the wall to
cover her nakedness. "Meero was just about to drain my mind for--" She
paused.
"I know what for," Lawrence said. "I know the whole thing." He glanced
around. "I might have known," he said. "Meero was using some kind of
drug on you, wasn't he?"
She nodded.
"There's time for explanation later," Lawrence said. "The Viagoni are
waiting for us, to take us back to Earth and to safety."
"What about Meero?"
"He'll go with all the rest of them," Lawrence said. "When we've built
your annihilator, and when we've wiped out this cancer spot of the
universe. Let's go."
He took her by the hand, and they raced through the sleeping Vegan base
to the waiting Viagoni ship.