by H. B. Fyfe
“Bastard!” spat the spacer.
He butted, successfully but profitlessly. He rabbit-punched twice with his right hand, reaching around under the soldier’s armpit. Only when he gouged at a large, black eye did the defending arm come up.
Taranto set his feet and banged three times to the midsection, getting plenty of body twist into his motion.
He found himself holding a very limp Syssokan, who slid down as the spacer stepped back.
Taranto sucked in a gasping breath. He staggered aside to pick up the spears, feeling better now that he was armed, no matter how primitively.
He had hardly straightened up when he saw the officer round the edge of the little butte, a mere fifty feet away. The Syssokan hesitated at the sight of the Terran standing over two of his soldiers, and Taranto threw one of the spears.
The trouble was that he did not know how to handle one. A spear, after all, was not standard equipment on a spaceship. The point twisted away from the target, and much of the force went into a slow spin. The officer hissed a disdainful comment and caught the weapon out of the air with one hand.
Taranto stooped for a rock, which he hurled with more effect. It shattered with a fine crack against the cliff near enough to the Syssokan to make him throw himself behind a boulder for cover. Taranto left him in the middle of a yell to his soldiers and sprinted off into the open valley.
Carrying the spear did not help matters much, but he thought the Syssokans might regard it as a more dangerous deterrent than he knew it to be in his untrained hands. The next time he looked around, he saw that he could rejoice in a splendid lead of two hundred yards. On the other hand, the officer now had a numerous group with him, and would probably get organized at last. Taranto slowed to a jog, to save himself against the time when they should begin to catch up.
“Taranto!” said a small voice.
He broke automatically into a dead run, without even looking around.
“Wait, Taranto!” called the little voice. “Look up, for the spy-eye!”
The spacer slowed as understanding burst upon him. He looked back and saw a spark of light gaining on him. It arrived and hovered over his head.
“It may still work,” the voice informed him. “The ship is down. I told them what happened, and they’re putting up a helicopter. Where’s Meyers?”
“I don’t know,” said Taranto. “Back on the ridge, I guess. Look, I can’t just stand here until that ’copter comes. I’ll be a pincushion.”
“Head for that hill ahead about a quarter-mile,” said the voice from the little flyer. “I’ll guide them there.”
The Syssokans were running now, spreading out in a well-drilled manner. Taranto boosted himself into high speed again.
The hill ahead was more toward the center of the valley. If the pursuers were aware of some connection between his flight and the position of the spaceship, they would be satisfied to have him heading away from the ridge enclosing the valley. Taranto hoped that they would not worry enough to turn on a burst of speed, for he was convinced that they could outrun him.
He was right—he reached the steep slopes of the hill with a bare fifty yards left of his lead, and he was on the point of foundering at that. His knees buckled for an instant as he hit the first rise, and he saved himself from pitching on his face only by thrusting out the butt of the spear he carried.
Somehow, he made it another fifty feet up the slope, hearing the voice beside his ear say, “To the right, Taranto! Head for that flat spot! Here comes the helicopter.”
He wiped salty sweat from his eyes with the back of one hand and looked up. A large, quietly whirring shape shadowed the stars. It dropped rapidly toward him as a howl broke out behind him.
Taranto took the spear in both hands, holding it at one end, and sent it whirling end over end at the closing Syssokans. The whole center of the group dropped flat to let it swish over their heads.
Before they could rise, the helicopter reached Taranto. It came down so fast it bounced against the ground. Someone held out a hand to Taranto and yelled to him to jump. He was hauled into an open cockpit. Someone took a deathgrip on the waistband of his pants and he felt the helicopter climb.
He wiggled around until he could get his knees under him. There were two spacers in the cockpit of what was obviously an auxiliary craft from a spaceship. One of them, a very long-eared type with a narrow head, looked as if he had been born in some stellar colony. The other had a broad, bland face of an oriental Terran.
“Where is the other one?” asked the latter.
Taranto crept between the seats to which they were strapped before answering, for there were only chains at the open sides. He got his bearings, and directed the long-eared pilot to the ridge where he had rolled out of the litter.
It nearly broke his heart to see them reach it in less than a minute.
“There may be guards with him,” he warned. “Maybe he took off too.”
“We shall see,” said the broad-faced spacer.
He ran a spotlight along the ridge, stopped, and brought it back to bear upon a lonely figure. Meyers stood up and waved. No Syssokan was in sight; the officer must have taken them all with him.
He knew what he was doing, thought Taranto. The guy’s still here.
The helicopter eased down to hover over a large rock. Meyers climbed laboriously upon it and was hauled aboard. Taranto squeezed himself back behind the seats to make room.
“It’s about time you got here,” puffed Meyers. “I’m worn out.”
Taranto said nothing as the craft rose in the air and swooped off toward the spaceship. Someday, Meyers would ask how he had gotten away from the Syssokans. When it happened, Taranto swore to himself, he would show the slob.
NINETEEN
It was twenty after eight when Westervelt found himself back at the communications room with Smith. Rosenkrantz had alerted them to a message coming in from Syssoka.
“They didn’t expect to hit us during office hours,” he explained, “but as long as you’re here, I thought maybe you’d like to get it fresh.”
Smith had told the girls to pass the word to Lydman and Parrish, and Westervelt had followed him down the hall with the feeling that he had displayed his eye under the good lighting long enough. Now they listened as a slim, brown-haired man with a faintly scholarly aura completed his report on the escape of Louis Taranto and Harley Meyers, spacers.
Joe Rosenkrantz was fiddling with an auxiliary screen and murmuring into another microphone.
“…so it was a rather close call, even though the formula you sent us appears to have worked perfectly,” said the scholarly man. “I have not been able to determine exactly what caused the delay on the part of the Syssokans, since it seemed imprudent to display my little flying spy-eye where it might be seen, or even damaged.”
“Maybe you can pick up some rumors in the future,” suggested Smith. “If you do, we’d appreciate hearing them, to add to our file and make the case as complete as possible.”
The transmission lag was much less than that occurring with Trident. The D.I.R. man on Syssoka agreed to forward any subsequent discoveries.
“Those spacers you contacted are already heading out-system,” he told Smith. “I think they did a nice, clean job. It was too bad that they were seen at all, of course, but it will be news to me if the Syssokans drop around with any embarrassing questions.”
“Well, there is a large foreign quarter there,” Smith recalled. “Why should they suspect Terrans, after all?”
“Oh, they will, they will. They suspect everyone; but they must know so little that I feel sure I can bluff them. I can prove that I was here at the official residence all day.”
“Good!” said Smith. “Just in passing, I take it that no one was much hurt?”
The man on Syssokan grinned briefly.
“No one on our side,” he said, “although I understand the prisoners were suffering some from exhaustion and dehydration. This Louis Taranto seems to be quite a lad. There is reason to believe that he killed two or three of his guards with his bare hands—at least I saw the burial party carrying bodies with them as they marched the rest of the way back to the city.”
Smith laughed.
“I’ll have to add a note opposite his name and contact him. I could use a field agent like that! Well, my operator tells me I have another call coming in. Thanks for your work on this.”
“A pleasure,” said the man on Syssoka. “I really didn’t expect to contact you directly; my relative-time atlas must be a little old.”
“No, it’s just that we never sleep, you know,” quipped Smith, and signed off.
He looked around, saw that it was Parrish who had entered, and added, “At least, it looks as if we’ll never sleep. I’m getting tired of it myself.”
“So is everybody except Joe, here,” said Parrish. “A com man isn’t normal anyway.”
“You gotta learn not to let all this stuff coming through bother you,” said Rosenkrantz wisely. “If I soaked up all these crazy calls, I’d have nightmares every day. As it is, I’m as normal as anybody when I leave here.”
“You haven’t been with us long enough,” said Smith. “What else do you have there?”
“There was a routine memo to make a check with the planet Greenhaven,” said Rosenkrantz. “I cleared it when a good time came. The D.I.R. station there pretended not to know what I was talking about.”
“What?” yelped Smith. “Don’t tell me we goofed on another one!”
“I don’t think so,” said Rosenkrantz. “While you were talking to Syssoka, a spaceship named Vulpecula called, said there was reason to believe the Greenhaven D.I.R. was locally monitored.”
“Tapped or the scrambler system broken,” said Parrish. “What does this ship want to talk about.”
“The Ringstad case.”
“Joe, godammit, who says you’re normal?” demanded Smith. “I bet we’ve sprung another one! Two in one night—we’re coming out with a good average after all. Get them on the screen before I pop my tanks!”
Westervelt listened to the transmission from the spaceship. Without the help of a planetary relay at the far end, it tended to be a trifle weak and wavery, but the essentials came through. He left Smith and Parrish patting each other on the back and went back to tell the girls about it.
They clustered around him in the main office, even Pauline leaving her cubicle for a moment and keeping one ear pointed at the switchboard inside.
“You should have heard Smitty conning her out of writing us up for the news magazines,” said Westervelt. “She seems to be pretty famous in her line.”
“What was she like?” asked Simonetta.
“She looked blondish, but the color wasn’t coming across too well. Not bad looking, in a breezy sort of way. The agent that sprung her had to skip too, because he thought the Greenhavens—they call them Greenies—had spotted his disguise.”
“Oh, boy!” breathed Pauline. “The cops must have been hot on their trail!”
“Either that, or he wanted to go along with her for other reasons,” said Westervelt. “They seemed kind of chummy.”
“Can they do that?” asked Beryl. “I mean, without orders, and all that?”
Westervelt grinned.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, “but he’s doing it. He can’t go back now. Anyway, Smitty simmered down fast and promised a draft for expenses would be waiting for him when the ship made planetfall. Technically, the D.I.R. ought to pay, because it turns out the guy is on their rolls and was only working with us temporarily.”
Simonetta nodded wisely.
“You watch our boss,” she predicted. “He’ll have this man on our lists. He always gets free with the money when he sees a good prospect from the main branch. Even if they stay in the honest side of the outfit, they cooperate with the back room here.”
Smith walked in with Parrish, beaming. His eye found Westervelt.
“Willie,” he said, “make a note, and tomorrow look up the planet Rotchen II. I have to send credits, and I didn’t want to say into wide, wide space that I didn’t know where it is. Bad for the department’s prestige!”
He looked about genially.
“I see you’ve told the news,” he commented. “It was a lift for me too. We haven’t done too badly, after all. Won two, lost one—damn!—and one is still a stalemate.”
“Anyone tell Bob?” asked Parrish quietly.
They all exchanged searching glances. Smith began to lose some of his ebullience. After a moment, he turned to Pauline.
“Buzz his office!” he said in a preoccupied tone.
Westervelt tried to subdue a mild chill along the backbone as Pauline gave Smith a wide-eyed look and slipped into her cubbyhole.
He couldn’t have phoned downstairs, he reassured himself. Pauline would say all the lines were busy, or cut off or something. But what if he looked out a window?
Smith had sauntered over to the center desk, where he waited beside the phone. It seemed to be taking Pauline a long time.
“Check with Joe,” advised Parrish. “Then try around the other rooms. Ten to one he’s in the lab.”
“Has anyone seen him in the last half hour?” asked Smith.
Westervelt pointed out that he had been the chief’s company in the communications room. The girls had not seen Lydman, but admitted that he might have gone past in the corridor without their having noticed.
“Yeah, he doesn’t make much noise,” Parrish agreed.
Smith had a thought. He moved toward his own office, paused to jerk his head significantly toward Parrish’s, and opened his own door. Parrish went over past Beryl’s desk and thrust his head into his own office. Lydman was not in either room.
“Mr. Smith!” called Pauline in a worried tone. “I’m sorry, but I can’t seem to reach him.”
“Oh, Christ!” said Parrish. “He isn’t talking again!”
He did something Westervelt had never seen that self-possessed man resort to before this evening. He began to gnaw nervously upon a knuckle. He saw the youth staring, and snatched his hand from his mouth.
Smith glowered unhappily at the floor. Westervelt thought he could hear his own pulse, so quiet had the office grown.
The chief backed up to the unpleasant decision.
“We’d better spread out and wander around until someone sees him face to face,” he said. “If he wants to be let alone, let him alone! Just pass the word on where he is.”
Westervelt volunteered to go down one wing while Parrish took the other. As they left, cautioned to take their time and act natural, Smith was telling the girls to open the doors to the adjacent offices again and keep their ears tuned, in case Lydman should come looking for him or Parrish.
Westervelt turned right past the stairs, and went to the door of the library.
It will be perfectly natural, he told himself. We made out on two cases. I just want to tell him about it, in case he hasn’t heard. Why the hell don’t they get that cable fixed? They want their bills paid on time, don’t they?
He could hear the newscasts now, about how tough a job the electricians faced, and how tense was the situation. Westervelt decided he would not listen.
He opened the door to the library casually and sauntered in. The pose was wasted; Lydman was not there.
Westervelt went on to the conference room on this side, and found it empty as well. He looked in on Joe Rosenkrantz, who, from the door, appeared to be alone. Just to leave no stone unturned, he retreated up the hall to the door marked “Shaft” and poked his head inside. He had to grope around for a light switch, and when he found it was rewarded with nothing more than the sight of
a number of conduits running from floor to unfinished ceiling. A little dust drifted down on him from atop the ones that bent to run to outlets on the same floor.
“Well, nobody can say I overlooked anything,” grumbled Westervelt.
He went back to the communications room. Rosenkrantz was listening in on some conversation from a station on Luna that was none of his business.
“Any sign of Lydman around here?” asked Westervelt.
“Not since the Yoleen brawl,” grunted Rosenkrantz. “That’s a good-looking babe running that Lunar station. Why can’t we dig up some messages for them?”
“I’ll work on it,” promised Westervelt halfheartedly.
He walked quietly around the corner past the power equipment. No Lydman. The next step was the laboratory. He looked at his watch, then leaned against the wire mesh partition for a good ten minutes. Let Parrish cover the ground, he decided.
In the end, with no sign of Parrish or Lydman, he opened the door and stepped into the dark laboratory. He made his way cautiously ahead, thinking that Lydman was probably in his office. Feeling his path with slow steps, and carefully avoiding the possibility of tipping over any of the stacks of cartons, he had progressed to the center of the large chamber when the lights went on.
Westervelt felt as if he had jumped a foot, and the blood pounded through his veins.
Gaping around with open mouth, he finally met the eye of Pete Parrish, who stood half inside the doorway to the corridor, his hand still raised to the light switch.
They both relaxed. Parrish smiled feebly, with less than normal display of his fine teeth. Westervelt contented himself with passing a hand across his forehead. It came away damp.
“Well,” said Parrish, “where was he?”
Westervelt closed his eyes and groaned.
“You’re kidding,” he said. “Please say you’re kidding! It’s too late in the day to fool around, Pete.”
Parrish looked alarmed. He strode forward, letting the door close behind him. Westervelt, finding himself shivering in a draft, went to meet him.