Nevertheless, Colgrave didn’t like the situation in the least. He had been assured that the odds against encountering Ralan vessels in this area of space were improbably high. By nature and training he distrusted coincidences. However, the matter was out of his hands. The pilots already were preparing to shift to emergency speed and, plainly, there was nothing to be done at the moment.
He settled down to watch the operation. One of the pilots was speaking to the engineering officer over the intercom; the other handled the controls.
It was this second man who suddenly gave a startled shout.
In almost the same instant, the ship seemed to be wrenched violently to the left. Colgrave was hurled out of his seat, realized there was nothing he could do to keep from smashing into the bulkhead on his right . . .
At that precise point, his memories shut off again.
“Fleegle!” something was crying shrilly. “Fleegle! Fleegle! Fleegle!”
Colgrave started, looked around. The small green biped nearest him downhill was uttering the cries. It had turned and was facing him frontside. Presumably it had just become aware of him and was expressing alarm. It waved its stubby forelimbs excitedly up and down. Farther down the slope several of its companions joined in with “Fleegle!” pipings of their own. Others stood watchfully still. They probably had eyes of a sort somewhere in the wrinkled balls of their heads; at any rate, they all seemed to be staring up at him.
“Fleegle! Fleegle! Fleegle!”
The whole hillside below suddenly seemed alive with the shrilling voices and waving green forelimbs. Colgrave twisted half around, glanced up the slope behind him.
He was sliding the gun out of its holster as he came quietly to his feet, completing the turn. The thing that had been coming down toward him stopped in mid-stride, not much more than forty feet away.
It was also a biped, of a very different kind, splotchy gray-black in color and of singularly unpleasant appearance. About eight feet tall, it had long, lean, talon-tipped limbs and a comparatively small body like a bloated sack. The round, black head above the body looked almost fleshless, sharp bone-white teeth as completely exposed as those of a skull. Two circular yellow eyes a few inches above the teeth stared steadily at Colgrave.
He felt a shiver of distaste. The creature obviously was a carnivore and could have become dangerous to him if he hadn’t been alerted by the clamor of the fleegle pack. In spite of its scrawny, gangling look, it should weigh around two hundred and fifty pounds, and the teeth and talons would make it a formidable attacker. Perhaps it had come skulking down from the forest to pick up one of the browsing fleegles and hadn’t noticed Colgrave until he arose. But he had its full attention now.
He waited, unmoving, gun in hand, not too seriously concerned—a couple of blasts should be enough to rip that pulpy body to shreds—but hoping it would decide to leave him alone. The creature was a walking nightmare, and tangling with unknown lifeforms always involved a certain amount of risk. He would prefer to have nothing to do with it.
The fleegle racket had abated somewhat. But now the toothy biped took a long, gliding step forward and the din immediately set up again. Perhaps it didn’t like the noise, or else it was interested primarily in Colgrave; at any rate, it opened its mouth as if it were snarling annoyedly and drew off to the right, moving horizontally along the slope with long, unhurried spider strides, round yellow eyes still fixed on Colgrave. The fleegle cries tapered off again as the enemy withdrew. By the time it had reached a point around sixty feet away, the slopes were quiet.
Now the biped started downhill, threading its way deliberately among the boulders like a long-legged, ungainly bird. But Colgrave knew by then it was after him; and those long legs might hurl it forward with startling speed when it decided to attack. He thumbed the safety off the gun.
With the fie ogles silent, he could hear the rasping sounds the thing made when it opened its mouth in what seemed to be its version of a snarl . . . working up its courage, Colgrave thought, to tackle the unfamiliar creature it had chanced upon.
As it came level with him on the hillside, it was snarling almost incessantly. It turned to face him then, lifted its clawed forelegs into a position oddly like that of a human boxer, hesitated an instant and came on swiftly.
A shrill storm of fleegle pipings burst out along the slope behind Colgrave as he raised the gun. He’d let the thing cut the distance between them in half, he decided, then blow it apart . . .
Almost with the thought, he saw the big biped stumble awkwardly across a rock. It made a startled, bawling noise, its forelimbs flinging out to help it catch its balance; then it went flat on its face with a thump.
There was instant stillness on the hillside. The fleegles apparently were watching as intently as Colgrave was. The biped sat up slowly. It seemed dazed. It shook its ugly head and whimpered complainingly, glancing this way and that about the slope. Then the yellow eyes found Colgrave.
Instantly, the biped leaped to its feet, and Colgrave hurriedly brought the gun up again. But the thing wasn’t resuming its charge. It wheeled, went plunging away up the slope, now and then uttering the bawling sound it had made as it stumbled. It appeared completely panicked.
Staring after it, Colgrave scratched his chin reflectively with his free hand. After a moment, he resafetied the gun, shoved it back into the holster. He felt relieved but puzzled.
The biped, plainly, was not a timid sort of brute. It must possess a certain amount of innate ferocity to have felt impelled to attack a creature of whose fighting ability it knew nothing. Then why this sudden, almost ludicrous flight? It might be convinced he had knocked it down in some manner as it came at him, but still—
Colgrave shrugged. It was unimportant, after all. The biped had almost reached the top of the slope by now, was angling to the left to reach the lichen-gray forest a few hundred yards away. Its pace hadn’t lessened noticeably. He was rid of it.
Then, as Colgrave’s gaze shifted along the boulder-studded top of the hill, something like a half-remembered fact seemed to nudge his mind. He stared, scowling abstractedly. Was there something familiar about that skyline? Something he should . . . he made a shocked sound.
An instant later, he was climbing hurriedly, in something like a panic of his own, up the rocky slope.
Beyond that crest, he remembered now, the ground dropped away into a shallow valley. And in that valley—how many hours ago?—he had landed the Ralan Talada’s lifeboat, with the Sigma File on board. Every minute he had spent wandering dazedly about the area since then had brought him closer to certain recapture—
III
He had been slammed against the bulkhead on the Lornese courier with enough violence to stun him. When he awoke, he was a prisoner under guard on the Talada, lying on a bunk to which he was secured in a manner designed to make him as comfortable as possible. The cabin’s furnishings indicated it belonged to one of the ship’s officers.
It told Colgrave among other things that they knew who he was. Raiders of the Talada class had a liquid-filled compartment in their holds into which several hundred human beings could be packed at a time, layered like so many sardines, and kept alive and semiconscious until the ship returned to port. An ordinary prisoner would simply have been dumped into that vat.
His suspicions were soon confirmed. A swarthy gentleman, who addressed Colgrave by name and introduced himself as Colonel Ajoran, an intelligence agent of Imperial Rala, came into the cabin. He waved out the attendant guard, offered Colgrave a cigarette, outlined his situation briefly to him.
Rala had obtained information of his mission on the Lorn Worlds and arranged to have the courier which would take him back to Earth with the Sigma File intercepted along any of the alternate routes it might take. The courier’s engineering officer was a Ralan agent who had jammed the emergency drive to block their escape, then, as an additional measure, released a paralysis gas to keep Colgrave and the Lornese pilots helpless until the courier could be boar
ded. Colgrave already had been knocked out by the jolt given the ship by the jammed drive, but the pilots had some seconds left in which to act.
One of them had shot himself in preference to becoming a Ralan prisoner. The other had shot the engineering officer, had been captured with Colgrave and was at present being tortured to death in retribution for his ill-considered slaying of a Ralan agent.
Colonel Ajoran offered Colgrave another cigarette, made a few philosophical remarks about the fortunes of war, and came out with his proposition.
He wanted Colgrave’s help in decoding and transcribing the Sigma File immediately. In return he would see to it that when they reached Imperial Rala, Colgrave would be treated as a reasonable man who understood that the only course open to him was to serve Ralan interests as effectively as he previously had served those of Earth. In that event, he would find, Ajoran assured him, that Rala was generous to those who served it well.
Implying that their discussion would be continued after dinner, the colonel then excused himself, called the guard back in and left the cabin.
During the next hour Colgrave put in some heavy thinking. He had made one observation which presently might be of use to him. At the moment, of course, he could do nothing but wait. Colonel Ajoran’s plan was a bold one but made sense. Evidently he held a position fairly high up in the echelons of Ralan intelligence. Knowing the contents of the Sigma File in detail, he immediately would become an important man to rival government groups to whom the information otherwise would not be readily available. He could improve his standing by many degrees at one stroke.
At the end of the hour, dinner was served to Colgrave in his cabin by a woman who was perhaps as beautiful, in an unusual way, as any he had seen. She was very slender; her skin seemed almost as pure a white as her close-cropped hair, and her eyes were so light a blue that in any other type they would have appeared completely colorless. She gave, nevertheless, an immediate impression of vitality and contained energy. She told Colgrave her name was Hace, that she was Ajoran’s lady, and that she had been instructed to see to it that he was provided with every reasonable comfort while he considered Ajoran’s proposal.
She went on chatting agreeably until Colgrave had finished his dinner in the bunk. The colonel then joined them for coffee. The discussion remained a very indirect one, but Colgrave presently had the impression that he was being offered an alliance by Ajoran. He was one of Earth’s top military agents, possessed unique information which the colonel could put to extremely good use on Rala. Colgrave would, in effect, remain on Ajoran’s staff and receive every consideration due a valuable associate. He gathered that one of the immediate shipboard considerations being proffered for his cooperation was the colonel’s lady.
When the pair left him, Ajoran observing that the Talada’s sleep period had begun, the thing had been made clear enough. Neither of the two guards assigned to Colgrave reappeared in the cabin—which he had learned was a section of Ajoran’s own shipboard suite—and the door remained closed. Presumably he was to be left undisturbed to his reflections for the next seven hours.
Colgrave did not stay awake long. He had a professional’s appreciation of the value of rest when under stress; and he already had appraised his situation here as thoroughly as was necessary.
He had a minimum goal—the destruction of the Sigma File—and he had observed something which indicated the goal might be achieved if he waited for circumstances to favor him. Beyond that, he had an ascending series of goals with an ascending level of improbability. They also had been sufficiently considered. There was nothing else he cared to think about at the moment He stretched out and fell asleep almost at once.
When he awoke some time later with the hairs prickling at the base of his skull, he believed for a moment he was dreaming of the thing he had not cared to think about. There was light on his right and the shreds erf a voice . . . ghastly whispered exhalations from a throat which had lost the strength to scream. Colgrave turned his head to the right, knowing what he would see.
Part of the wall to one side of the door showed now as a vision screen; the light and the whispers came from there. Colgrave told himself he was seeing a recording, that the Lornese pilot captured with him had been dead for hours. Colonel Ajoran was a practical man who would have brought this part of the matter to an end without unreasonable delay so that he could devote himself fully to his far more important dealings with Colgrave, and the details shown in the screen indicated the pilot could not be many minutes from death.
The screen slowly went dark again and the whispers ended. Colgrave wiped sweat from his face and turned on his side. There was nothing at all he could have done for the pilot. He had simply been shown the other side of Ajoran’s proposition.
A few minutes later, he was asleep again.
When he awoke the next time, the cabin was lit. His two guards were there, one of them arranging Colgrave’s breakfast on a wall table across from the bunk. The other simply stood with his back to the door, a nerve gun in his hand, his eyes on Colgrave. Fresh clothes, which Colgrave recognized as his own, brought over from the courier, had been placed on a chair. The section of wall which ordinarily covered the small adjoining bathroom was withdrawn.
The first guard completed his arrangements and addressed Colgrave with an air of surly deference. Colonel Ajoran extended his compliments, was waiting in the other section of the suite and would like to see Major Colgrave there after he had dressed and eaten. Having delivered the message, the guard came over to unfasten Colgrave from the bunk, his companion shifting to a position from which he could watch the prisoner during the process. That done, the two withdrew from the room, Colgrave’s eyes following them reflectively.
He showered, shaved, dressed, and had an unhurried breakfast. He could assume that Ajoran felt the time for indirect promises and threats was over, and that they would get down immediately now to the business on hand.
When Colgrave came out of the cabin, some thirty minutes after being released, he found his assumption confirmed. This section of the suite was considerably larger than the sleep cabin; the colonel and Hace were seated at the far right across the room, and a guard stood before a closed door, a little left of the section’s center line. The door presumably opened on one of the Talada’s passages. The guard was again holding a nerve gun, and a second gun of the same kind lay on a small table beside Ajoran. Hace sat at a recording apparatus just beyond the colonel Evidently she doubled as his secretary when the occasion arose.
At the center of the room, on a table large enough to serve as a work desk, was writing material, a tape reader and, near the left side of the table, the unopened Sigma File.
Colgrave absorbed the implications of the situation as he came into the room. The three of them there were on edge, and the nerve guns showed his present status—they wouldn’t injure him but could knot him up painfully in an instant and leave him helpless for minutes. He was being told his actions would have to demonstrate that he deserved Ajoran’s confidence.
Almost simultaneously, the realization came to him that the favorable circumstances for which he had decided to wait were at hand.
He went up to the table, looked curiously down, at the Sigma File. It was about the size and shape of a briefcase set upright. Colgrave glancing over at Ajoran, said, “I’m taking it for granted you’ve had the destruct charge removed.”
Ajoran produced a thin smile.
“Since it could have no useful purpose now,” he said, “I did, of course, have it removed.”
Colgrave gave him an ironic bow. His left hand, brushing back, struck the Sigma File, sent it toppling toward the edge of the table.
He might as well have stuck a knife point into all three of them. A drop to the floor could not damage the file, but they were too keyed up to check their reactions. Ajoran started to his feet with a sharp exclamation; even Hace came half out of her chair. The guard moved more effectively. He leaped forward from the wall, bending down, sti
ll holding the nerve gun, caught the file with his wrist and free hand as it went off the table, turned to place it back on the table.
Colgrave stepped behind him.
In the back of the jackets of both guards he had seen a lumpy bulge near the hip, indicating each carried a second gun, which could be assumed to be a standard energy type. His left hand caught the man by the shoulder, his right found the holstered gun under the jacket, twisted it upward and fired as he bent the guard over it. His left arm tingled—Ajoran had cut loose with the nerve gun, trying to reach him through the guard’s body. Then Colgrave had the gun clear, saw Ajoran coming around on his right and snapped off two hissing shots, letting the guard slide to the floor. Ajoran stopped short, hauled open the sleep cabin door and was through it in an instant, slamming it shut behind him.
Across the room, Hace, almost at the other door, stopped, too, as Colgrave turned toward her. They looked at each other a moment, then Colgrave stepped around the guard and walked up to her, gun pointed. When he was three steps away, Hace closed her eyes and stood waiting, arms limp at her sides. His left fist smashed against the side of her jaw and she dropped like a rag doll.
Colgrave looked back. The guard was twisting contortedly about on the floor. His face showed he was dead, but it would be a minute or two before the nerve charge worked itself out of his body. The coloners lady wouldn’t stir for a while. Ajoran himself . . . Colgrave stared thoughtfully at the door of the sleep cabin.
Ajoran might be alerting the ship from in there at the moment, although there hadn’t been any communication device in view. Or he could have picked up some weapon he fancied more than a nerve gun and was ready to come out again. The chances were good, however, that he’d stay locked in where he was until somebody came to inform him the berserk prisoner had been dealt with. It wasn’t considered good form in Rala’s upper echelons to take personal risks which could be delegated to subordinates.
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 149