Paul turned without a word and let himself be escorted off. Two men earned out the body of Biset, and the space where Paul had stood was occupied a moment later by a man with a medical kit, who began to fuss with Giles’ bums. Above the head of the working medician, Giles saw the tall shape of an Albenareth step into view and look down at him.
“Captain?” said Giles in Basic, uncertainly. Even after all those days on the lifeship, he could not be sure to tell the one Albenareth he knew from those he did not know.
“I am satisfied,” said the Captain. “It is apparently a real thing, this ‘friendship.’ There are others of our holy race who have been on such new worlds as this and had experiences with humans that suggest it is not uncommon—I am now told.”
“Told ...” said Giles. He looked about the room, at the other tall, dark shapes. “Where did they all come from?”
“I did not know,” said the Captain. “But evidently, while you waited for me, you by your stillness and other unusual behavior aroused a concern in the mind of him of our race who greeted you and sent for me. As a precaution, the local human police were contacted, and these ordered a listening device attached to your rock buggy, while you were unnoticing. We were listened to as we talked and followed here, by both my people and yours.”
Giles shook his head feebly. The medician had just given him some kind of an injection and he was feeling the pain recede as strength returned, but he was still far from being himself.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“We have been a subject of the attention of both our peoples, here on 20B-40, ever since we landed, Adelman,” the Captain said. “As I may have said, our races on these new worlds seem closer to each other than in other places. But I wait for what you promised me.”
“Promised?”
“You promised to tell me who it was among you humans who destroyed my ship. I wait to hear, now.”
“Giles ...” It was Mara, speaking beside him, wamingly. He put up a hand to calm her.
“I’ll tell you,” he said.
“Giles!”
“No ... no. It’s all right,” he said aside to her. “Listen ...”
He turned back to the Captain.
“I set a bomb aboard your ship,” he said.
“You?” The Captain’s tall body moved almost imperceptibly toward him.
“Yes,” Giles said. “It was part of a plan worked out by the Oca Front to get me to 20B40 without arousing any suspicion on Paul Oca’s part that one of us had been sent to kill him.” Giles shook his head briefly. “To think I left Earth intending to kill ... but I was wrong about a good many things, then.”
He looked back up at the Captain.
“The idea was that the bomb would damage your vessel enough so that you’d want to turn aside to 20B-40 for repairs. Once we’d landed here, I could leave the ship and find Paul.”
“I am listening.” The Captain’s voice was expressionless, remote.
“To make the plan work,” said Giles, wearily, “I had to set the bomb off at just the right time. Which was why I knew something about your course and the location of 20B40 from the position at which the explosion occurred. Also—we thought—the bomb had to be just the right size so that the ship would be damaged enough to make you turn aside from your original course, but not damaged so much that it couldn’t make it safely to 20B-40. There was no plan for me to make the trip here in a lifeship.”
His voice was harsh as he ended.
“You planned,” said the Captain. “But the bomb was larger than you thought?”
Giles shook his head.
“It was the right size,” he said. “But it had help we hadn’t counted on. Someone else wired another bomb to it—a much more powerful bomb, that couldn’t fail to wreck your ship completely.” His voice took on an edge. “Good God, where would a bunch of amateur revolutionists like us get hold of something that would make metal bum like dry leaves?”
“Why,” asked the Captain, “this second bomb?”
“Because there was another plan I didn’t know anything about. It called for me to get to 20B-40 in a lifeship, as we did. But not just me alone, but with a handful of people.” Giles lifted a heavy hand to indicate Mara and the other arbites from the lifeship who still stood around his chair. “It was understood that if the ship died, you Albenareth would choose to die with her—all but one of you, who’d pilot the lifeship to safety, out of duty to save the few humans that remained.”
“Why did you agree to this second bomb, this further plan?” demanded the emotionless voice of the Captain.
“I didn’t Neither did any of the others on the lifeship, but one. That one identified herself when I first came to this dome here. Biset.”
“The female I just killed?” said the Captain.
Giles nodded.
“Biset admitted she’d planned to bring these others, and herself, with me to 20B-40 in the lifeship. By admitting that, she gave herself away. The only way she could have been sure of doing what she planned was if she set the second bomb herself—and made sure it was a bomb large enough not only to destroy the ship, but to make sure no other arbites, except those she’d chosen back on Earth, lived to escape. I’ll bet if it’d been possible to examine your ship before the bomb went off, we’d have found every lifeship but the one we took was sabotaged, made unusable.”
There was a long silence in the room. Finally, the Captain spoke.
“How could she know that I”—the alien voice broke, uncharacteristically, then went on as unemotional as ever—”that you would be able to take command of the vessel and bring it to 20B-40, rather than Belben?”
“She didn’t;” said Giles. “She and her people were as ignorant as I was of Albenareth ways of thinking. It never occurred to her, any more than it did to me, that you’d do anything but head for the nearest safe planetfall, which was 20B-40. But when you insisted on going on to Belben instead, even if we all arrived dead, she was forced into using the joker in her deck—the one person she’d included just in case there was some dirty work to be done.”
He turned his head to look at Esteven.
“She supplied you not only with tonk but with paper to take with it, to begin with, didn’t she?” Giles said. “Then she claimed she was out of paper.”
“And I believed her!” Esteven’s face twisted. “I believed her! That’s why I went for the book.”
“Yes,” said Giles. He looked back at the Captain. “So now you know, Rayumung.”
“Yes,” said the Albenareth. Her head lifted. “And now that I know, I shall take back the child that is mine, and live. For I have canceled my dishonor by slaying the one who slew my ship; and there is also honor to be acquired in this thing you have given me, called ‘friendship,’ as I shall explain it to others of my holy race.”
“Yes,” said Giles. “And when you’ve done that, there’s another word you can introduce them to. It’s called ‘cooperation’— and it can mean human and Albenareth as shipmates working vessels through space together.”
The dark eyes glittered on him.
“You have done much, Adelman,” said the Captain, grimly. “Be warned. Do not try for too much, too soon.”
The eyes were steady on Giles. Slowly, Giles nodded. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “Good luck, anyway, Rayumung.”
“The holy race does not proceed by luck,” said the Captain. “But by understanding of the Way, on which all things may journey.”
She turned away. But just before going she turned back.
“All things but slaves,” she said. “However, I find that I have changed my thought about these others here.” Her gaze swept over the arbites about Giles. “They have proved themselves not slaves, all save the one I have just slain. This, therefore, is the greater message I carry to the Albenareth, and ‘friendship’ is the lesser. For in truth, respect between us and you must come before all other things.”
She turned and went, erect, unyielding, stal
king from their presence with great and measured strides, like someone who now saw her way clear to the uttermost reaches of eternity.
Table of Contents
Lifeboat
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Lifeboat Page 19