Part 12

He avoided the lights of the truck by scooting up the landing ramp of the starship and into the spacelock. It occurred to Farradyne as he went that the lack of people, including guards, out in this region of the spacefield was in a way its own protection. Any distant watcher seeing a figure out here would know automatically that the person was an intruder; perhaps the only reason Farradyne had not been hailed down was due to the known presence of workmen.

Farradyne lay with his chin on the sill of the spacelock and peered out as the truck went by. It would be some time before they were all finished, he concluded, and so he decided to kill the time in action.

Feeling his way along the dark corridors, Farradyne made his way aloft, up the stairways and around the circular floors until he came upon the one door with a streak of light coming underneath it. The light helped him see; the door was secured with a single bolt of the sliding variety, easy to open from the outside but impossible to move from within.

Farradyne slid the bolt and pushed open the door.

Norma was standing inside, poised defiantly with her hands on her hips, waiting. For a moment she did not recognize him, then her face twisted and said, "Well! If it isn't our interstellar man-about-space, Charles Farradyne!"

18

"Now see here," he said shortly, "Clevis must have told you about me."

"I knew that you and Clevis had something cooked up together the first time I saw him come into the Lancaster without a blazing gun in each hand," she said sourly.

"Well, then you ought to know that I'm--"

"You're a damned idiot, Farradyne! You bumbling fool!"

"But look, I'm here--"

"Where?"

"I was hiding in the inspection hatch. I couldn't see out. Don't you know where we are?"

"They didn't think I'd find it necessary to know," she replied bitingly. "You fancy pants!"

Farradyne swore in his throat. "Now I'll ask you whose side you're on," he snapped. "I came here to--"

"Whose side I'm on?" she laughed harshly. "Whose side are _you_ on, Farradyne? I hope you're on their side; you're bound to louse them up sooner or later."

"Look, Norma--"

"So you come bubbling home with the bait in your mouth, unable to feel the hook, and hand it to Howard to get caught on. Go back where you got that monkey costume and die."

"Norma, answer me one thing. Who was Frank Hannon?"

"Frank? Frank was Howard's right hand undercover man, Farradyne. He had the goods on a man whose name no one knows; he didn't say because he didn't have the chance. He had it all with him when you dumped the Semiramide."

Farradyne eyed her coldly. "There's one thing you've got to admit," he said. "That tale of my three-tongued people was no lotus-dream."

Her silence was as good as a grudging affirmation.

"So part of the pattern is clearing up," he went on. "But if Clevis found me because I'd had four rotten years mucking toadstools on Venus, I'm not above wondering if this was not part of some master plan. Could someone have wrecked the Semiramide and saved me to act someday as bait for Clevis?"

"Isn't that just a bit far-fetched?"

"Maybe and maybe not. Just think. We're not merely fighting an apparently well-integrated mob of dope-runners. We're fighting a blind battle against a whole culture that is calmly and maliciously undermining the moral fiber of the whole race so they can move in and take over with little or no opposition. Doesn't that make sense? Such a program has plans that extend for years; I may be only one small angle, although mine happens to be the angle that worked. Don't tell me you expect warfare to be run like a football game, complete with referees and penalties for kneeing a fallen contestant in the kidneys."

Norma considered it a moment. "I suppose it does make sense. Any formal declaration of war is an openly expressed intention of committing suicide. But you explain yourself if you can."

Farradyne shrugged. "Maybe for the first time I out-guessed them," he said hopefully. He went on to explain how he had done it in a few quick sentences. "Then," he finished, "the big ship didn't even try to find me--the little man that didn't escape. I also doubt that they knew where I was, or they'd not have let me run free all over town." He went on and finished the tale of his peregrinations.

"We saw them catch the Lancaster," she said. "We wondered just why you suddenly went dead at the stick after giving them such a chase. Well, I guess that's it. I'll go on the assumption that you aren't a hellflower devil."

"Thanks," he said bitterly. "And, why the sudden change?"

"I've heard this three-toned language that everybody was so scornful about. I've heard a lot of it. I know that a full-scale organization such as this bunch can and will pull some rather complicated capers, so I am no longer sure that it was your inept handling of a spacecraft that caused the death of my brother. He was on someone's trail and I've assumed it was you. Maybe it wasn't. And if it wasn't then the Semiramide affair was not even an accident on your part. So, damn you, I can't hate you any more."

"You can't hate me?"

"Not unless you turn out to be one of this outfit. And for the life of me I can't see just what you hope to learn from me that I didn't spill during their questionings."

"Did they--" he let the rest of the sentence hang because he didn't know just how to express it.

"They know everything I know," she said. "I've been filled to the gills with something they shot out of a needle that made me as happily loquacious as a babbling marmoset."

"Did they explain why they brought you back here? It seems to me they'd imprison you."

"That's for later. They're now comparing my tale with Howard's and after they get done comparing notes they'll bring Howard back and we'll take a little jaunt to what they call their 'Detention Planet' where I'll meet a certain number of other Solarians who have gotten a bit too sharp for their liking. It's in another stellar system, I believe, completely safe and far from home and as a last lever in this war they'll hold the lives of a few hundred thousand men and women over the heads of Terra."

Farradyne swore. "The stinking bastards!"

Norma shook her head coolly. "That's emotion, Charles. I don't know exactly what their purpose is, but I do understand that this is a conflict of eventual survival, and rule of an economic empire."

"But--"

Norma shook her head. "Try the shoe on the other foot, Charles. Suppose you had come upon these people with the rest of your kind--how would you see them?"

"As possible allies and friends."

"Balderdash! You'd have seen them as possible customers and people to be exploited and maybe enemies after you'd seen their history. Their attitude is as arrogant as ours and their personal justification as high. By some obscure luck of science they got to interstellar travel before we did and they automatically place us in an inferior position, but they also know that this inferiority is not so great as to make us a pushover. We are scientifically capable of discovering their interstellar drive at any moment, and why we have not is probably just a matter of our not combining the right sciences. Our knowledge of medicine is far vaster than theirs, for instance."

"How can you know this?" he asked.

Norma opened a few buttons at her throat and slipped her dress down over one shoulder. There was a small circular bandage stuck to one spot. "They took a sample of me," she said. "Because I seem to be immune to several diseases that should give me trouble. When I asked about this, they told me that they hoped to discover just what cell change took place when we take our anti-cancer immunization. This thing they have yet to discover. Oh they use our immunization," she said, slipping the dress up but forgetting to rebutton it, "but they use it as an African witch doctor might use a typhoid serum."

She nodded as she went on thinking, "This thing you have to remember, Charles, that if Terrans had arrived there first there would have been the same conflict, but conducted from the other side."

Farradyne shook his head angrily. "We're not inclined to ruin--"

"Stop sounding like one of King Arthur's Knights. Men of sense and good judgment don't request their enemies to meet them on a field of honor. Instead, a state of war is assumed and from that instant on, A is looking for a chance to stab B in the back because he knows that B will cut him off at the hips if he turns his back for a moment. Honor on the battlefield is accorded only to a defeated enemy; up to the time he is defeated, anything goes. And if both sides know that open warfare means total destruction, the process on either side is one of boring from within, or gnawing at the foundation. But this a bad place to get involved in a discussion of ethics. Where do we go from here?"

"If I knew how to run that ka-dodie in the Lancaster we'd head for Sol--if I knew where Sol was from here."

"And how about Howard?"

"I don't know about Clevis," he told her. "The thing to do would be to hike home as fast as we could and spill our tale to the people who would know what to do about it. Let's face it, Norma. They can mingle with Terrans because they can speak our language. But I couldn't mingle with them to locate Howard. I'd be picked up in a minute."

"So how do we get back?"

"Why do you think they brought the Lancaster?"

"Probably to fit her out as a bona fide hellflower runner."

"Okay. We'll hide out in my cubby until they run her back."

"You go hide out," said Norma. "If they find me missing, they'll know something smells bad."

Farradyne chuckled. "From what I know of them, they're as arrogantly secure as the Gods of Olympus. Some part of their gang is still expecting me to turn up near Terra on an escape course, and the only smart thing I have done is to be where they didn't plan me to be. So we'll be where they don't expect us to be and maybe we'll get away with it. Come on, let's hide out."

The hitch in their plans came when Farradyne led Norma down the stairs to the last deck below and stopped, holding up a warning hand.

"What's the matter?" she whispered.

He pointed. The hatch he had used was lying to one side and a beam of diffuse light was coming up from below. There came also the triple-tongued voices of two men.

Farradyne led Norma one deck above where he could speak without attracting the attention of the men below. "They've installed the space drive in the inspection cubby," he said. "That's probably what all the work was about. It's been taken from the bottom deck and permanently installed down in the cubby where it wouldn't attract attention on a casual tour. Maybe a different unit, I wouldn't know; the temporary job might have been only a harness-job to be used until they could haul the Lanc' to base for a real tear-down and rebuild."

"I didn't see any work-wagon," said Norma.

"Maybe not, but the workman is here, and tuning up the drive. We can't get below now."

"So what do we do?"

"I've half a hunch that they won't leave this ship standing idle long. Let's hide in the cargo hold until they stop tinkering."

Norma nodded thoughtfully. "Let's wait it out," she said. "Then if we have trouble, I can slope and run out of here like a startled rabbit and draw the chase away from you."

"You make the escape," he suggested, "I'll do the hare and the hounds."

Norma shook her head. "Let's use logic, and not emotion," she said calmly. "I'm known to be here, you're not. So if I cut and run and they catch me, that's it. But if you're caught running loose on this joint, they'll also start looking for me. If I carry my point, you'll still be unexpected. Follow? And someone may get back--the other way, no?"

"I suppose you are right."

"You know I am. It's just false chivalry. You get caught and we're all licked."

He took a deep breath. "You're right, of course."

"Now, here we are and can we be safe here?"

"I think--" He held up a hand abruptly. His ears, attuned to life aboard a spacer, had caught the sound of someone coming up the landing ramp and into the salon a few decks above. Then faint as if it were a hundred yards away but audible in the silence of the ship, they could hear the triple-tongued piping of a man.

He was answered by Carolyn Niles. "Speak Terran!"

Farradyne nudged Norma. "That's the line I used and it worked," he chuckled.

Carolyn's companion said, "Why use this mono-voice junk?"

"You know the rules. It's not smart to relax, you idiot."

"All right. So what's the answer?"

"Ask me in Terran."

"All right, Your Highness. I was merely inquiring as to the imminence of your take-off."

"Don't be insolent! We're taking off as soon as we're all aboard. Now get along with your work!"

The next voice scared them both out of a year's growth; they had been straining to hear Carolyn and her companion high above them in the salon, and now, with every nerve tense, the sound of the ship's intercom roared at them with terrifying volume. "Carolyn Niles! Go aloft, will you, and put the--" there came a triple-voiced syllable "--into stand-by!"

Carolyn's voice replied, "Aye-firm. But look, boys, shouldn't we have some Terran term for the space drive?"

"We ought to," acknowledged one of the men in the inspection cubby. "But how do you translate it into Terran terms when they have no term for it themselves?"

The other man said, "We could always use 'space drive'."

"No good. Better we didn't mention it at all. Leave it as it is."

Farradyne whispered, "They're a canny bunch. Talk the language always, act the part always, live the life always; and cut your enemy short when he's looking for something alien."

Another pair of feet came up the landing ramp, and Carolyn said, almost at the same time. "It's on. How's she working?"

"Fine. We're finished. Coming up."

"I want to see."

"Okay, so you come down and see. We're coming up and getting started."

"Pincered!" said Farradyne to Norma.

He drew her to the cargo hold and handed her down the service ladder. He followed, closing the door behind him and then, before he snapped out the lights, he reached up and removed one of them, saying, "I don't think we'll have an inspection, but if we do, having one lamp missing will cast a shadow we can stand in. This is a dimly lit joint at best." He waved at the shadow caused by the empty socket and then snapped the lamp off.

Their weight upon the cushion of flowers was released[1] and sat with their feet pulled up beneath them, not daring to say a word. Her breathing, and the faint pressure of her shoulder against his told him of her presence beside him.

[Footnote 1: Transcriber's Note: Possible printer error. This line is repeated on the next page that seems to be more appropriate to the story.]

They waited in the dark silence, listening, and occasionally tensing instinctively when someone clumped past the wall outside or seemed to come near the cargo hatch above their heads. There were voices and calls and running feet from time to time, and then the humming sound of the conveyor-belt.

The hatch above was opened wide but the lights were not put on.

And then from the end of the loose-cargo conveyor came a tumbling shower of hellblossoms. They landed on the floor in a conical heap and kept coming until both Farradyne and Norma were shoulder deep in them. The air filled with the thick, syrupy perfume. Farradyne felt a slight spell of dizziness from the heady odor and then wondered with horrified interest just what effect this completely unpredictable overdose of dope would do to the woman.

The shower of hellflowers came on and on, and Farradyne was forced to stand because of their depth. Still they came and he found himself swimming off his depth in them; it reminded him of treading in a haymow. The rain of blossoms ceased as the hold filled and the lights went on briefly for an inspection.

Farradyne was propped neck deep, his head barely below the ceiling and he felt quite safe from detection unless the inspectors put their heads down into the hatch to peer around the edges of the cylindrical hold. He looked at Norma. She had scrabbled up and a-top the pile and was lying on her back with her arms thrown over her head. Her eyes were closed, but as she drew in a deep breath, the lids went half-up and she looked over at Farradyne and smiled ecstatically.

The hatch slammed down, and she said huskily, "Such nice friends you have, Charles."

He wanted to ask her if she didn't find this friendship a bit overpowering, but instead he said, "They're certainly no friends of mine."

"Nor mine. But this is ..." and her voice trailed away to a whisper that he could not catch.

Pressure came upsurging and Farradyne felt that he did not have to explain that the Lancaster was on its way to space and perhaps back toward home. In the midst of the take-off pressure she found his hand and drew it toward her, she snuggled her face against his palm. Her free hand came over and touched his cheek, then ran back around his head. She pulled him forward until she could rest her head against his shoulder with her forehead against his face.

Her fingers ran through his hair and pressed his face to hers. He tried to free himself, but he could not escape without being rough about it and he believed that any bold move to elude her would bring forth either pleas or bitter demands loud enough to bring the enemy on the run. He struggled a bit, his hands closed on either side of her waist but instead of moving away, her body came forward against his.

Then, abruptly, the pressure of the drive went off and they floated free.

Their weight upon the cushion of flowers was released and the springiness of the hellblossoms thrust them up, hard, hurling them against the ceiling.

Norma's hands were dragged free of his head and, in clutching at him frantically, her fingernails raked his cheek. The pressure he held against her waist thrust her away as soon as she lost her leverage. Her head hit the ceiling with a dull thunk, followed by the soft sound of her body hitting flat. A sigh came from her lips, but it was the sigh of an unconscious person.

The hold was filled with hellflowers floating free and spread apart by the tiny pressure of the ends of their leaves and petals; Farradyne fought them away frantically, but only succeeded in digging himself deeper in the room.

Eventually he found the service ladder and clung to it, waving himself a breathing space by pushing the floating blossoms back.

Norma's inert hand touched him limply. Farradyne toyed with the idea of reviving her but gave it up instantly; let her sleep it off, and preferably alone and elsewhere in this hold. He gave the hand a push and she floated from him in the dark, pushing through the free mass by her heavier inertia.

The exertion had called upon his reserves and he drank in lungfuls of air that was stickily laden with the heavy perfume. It made him dizzy again and he fought for air, only succeeding in drawing more of the thick scent into his system. He wondered haphazardly what the effect of an overdose of love lotus might have on a man; the experiment had been tried but not to this extent. So far all it did was to make him feel as though he were being doctored with a dose of nitrous oxide.

He scrabbled up the ladder and opened the hatch cautiously. It was as dark outside as it was inside and Farradyne pushed the hatch up further to put his face in the clean air and take a deep breath. Then, because he felt better, he climbed out of the hold and floated free in the air above the hatch. He latched onto a handrail and closed the hatch carefully with a breathed, "You like 'em, baby. You breathe 'em until I get back!"

Then he sat in mid-air with one hand hooked in the rail and with deep breaths of the clean air, tried to think what to do next.

19

He prowled the cargo hold level, floating along the circular corridor. He knew it was not the safest thing to do but preferred anything to a return to the hold. He did not stop to decide whether it was the perfume of the lotus or the presence of the doped woman that kept him away from his cover.

An hour passed, then two, and Farradyne was growing bolder by the minute. He had covered the entire lower level of his Lancaster and had stopped above his former hiding place speculating whether to hide or not.

He decided not, and went floating upward through the ship until he came to the stateroom level. He floated around the corridor noticing that the little flags that indicated that the door was locked from the inside were all down except one. One of his "guests" did not trust his fellow travellers completely.

He floated on upstairs to the salon and almost ruined his silent flight by trying to put on the brakes. On the divan lay a man in his clothing, restrained by the hold-down safety strap. He was sound asleep.

Farradyne floated over, and then taking hold of the strap to keep himself from flying free with the motions, he deepened the man's slumber with a vicious cut of his revolver.

He floated on into the control room, where the silent and distant stars watched. Some of them were moving down; these would be the nearby stars, while the rest stood as immobile as he had always known them. He would have preferred to stay and watch the effect of travelling faster than light, for the aspect of the sky directly above was very strange in color and in constellation. But he knew that he had started something and he could see this odd, stellar phenomenon at some more leisured time.

He took a roll of two-inch adhesive tape from the medicine supplies and taped the unconscious man's wrists and ankles and then slapped a length over the mouth that sealed up the gash along the side of the head at the same time. Then he went down to his own quarters and opened the door slowly.

A second man slept there, but Farradyne did not lash out with the pistol. He holstered the gun and clipped the enemy along the side of the jaw with a sharp chop of his hand. Tape was applied quickly and effectively.

That made two.

He considered the situation carefully. So long as his batting average stayed at one thousand he was in fine shape. All it had to meet was one error and he was out of the game. His chances were not too good, but they were helped by the fact that he was an unknown enemy among them.

This was some sort of undeclared war, but the Lancaster could hardly have been termed a warship, since there were no space battles to fight. The ship ran itself, there was nothing to watch, so they did what all spacemen do, sleep. If he could catch them one by one....

He opened Stateroom One. It was empty. That put a different light on things. Maybe this was not a fully loaded transport. Maybe it was just like the average cargo-haul with only a couple of passengers.

He opened Stateroom Two and found it empty. That sort of proved it. He opened Stateroom Three and found a man asleep in the bunk. The enemy was stirring as Farradyne scanned the room, and he moved just as Farradyne hastily launched himself across the cabin. Haste ruined his aim so that his down-slashing hand clipped the man on the skull instead of hitting him alongside the ear. The man grunted and swung out blindly, hitting Farradyne and moving him up and away. Farradyne caught the upright of the bunk, staying his free flight, levered himself around and swung again.

The enemy parried the blow and let out a roar that sounded like three angry locomotives tooting for the right of way. Farradyne pulled himself down and around, then kicked out with both feet, catching the man in the face and chest. The force drove his man deep into the mattress, from which he rebounded to fold up over the hold-down strap. He flopped up and down, limp, an inert mass caught between two springs. The same force drove Farradyne out toward the open door.